A Smoky Weekend

Welp, our last ride was on Wednesday of last week. TC got his teeth done that afternoon, then he had Thursday off, and then on Friday, the smoke came in and stayed through the weekend. What a bummer! I didn't even get to see how TC felt after his teeth. The vet said that he was definitely due and had a couple of mouth ulcers so hopefully he is feeling much better!

I spent time with him on Friday and Saturday and then gave him Sunday off. By Monday, our air was in the 70s but with basically the whole weekend kind of iffy, I opted to do his PT exercises and then walk him down the road bareback but with his bands on. He coughed twice, once as we were going out and then once about half way down the road. They were just one off coughs, not like the coughing fit he had last year when I immediately stopped riding him and called the vet, but enough for me to think that he definitely wasn't ready to work Monday and probably today as well. 

Happy bareback wandering pony

A friend who I bonded with after the fires last year posted on Facebook about the things she'd learned from having a horse with asthma in the fires and one point sat with me so heavily. Here's what she said: 

3) Its actually heartbreaking to watch a prey animal lose its ability to flee. I’m part of airway groups on social media and horses get put down with some frequency because they are not able to be physically or mentally comfortable with the loss of complete airway function.

The idea of TC living the rest of his life terrified because he doesn't think he can flee from danger because of my selfish decision to ride him in the smoke... that's really horrible. She also emphasized that airway disease is cumulative over time, so I could probably ride him through the smoke, just like a lot of people did at a local rated dressage show when the AQI was 350, and not see severe symptoms for years. But by the time we see those severe symptoms, well, apparently some horses need to be put down because they cannot cope with having limited airway function. I want TC to be a happy, healthy horse into his 20s and hopefully 30s! 

So as much as things are going so well right now and I want to keep riding him, I also want to make sure that I'm setting him up for a good life. I already know he's sensitive to the smoke so we'll be playing it insanely safe. I'd rather pay to have him at a boarding stable this winter than try to keep riding in the fall knowing that winter will be a light season for us. As I've said before, I'm starting to realize that his light season is going to be fall from now on. 

The SO and I have at least been enjoying the
amusement park up the road from us in the bad air

There are also tons of things we can still do together that will help us in the future even when it's smoky though! On days where we can't even walk (150+ AQI), I do his PT exercises, have him stand on the balance pads, and do belly lifts. On days where we can walk (under 150 AQI), he's now quiet enough to walk down the road and back in the bands after doing all of our exercises. And I'm happy to have the nebulizer now living at the barn and he's now on his breathing supplement for the rest of the fall. 

I'm hoping the smoke stays cleared for the next few days and then later this week, we'll try some light trot work and see if he coughs at all. With the new fire closer to us (still far, Lake Tahoe, but closer than the other fire), I don't think it's worth getting the vet out to ultrasound lungs just yet given that we probably haven't even scratched the surface of fire season. I may text her to see what she's recommending for these shorter but intense times of bad air in between decent air days. 

It was a pretty clear day, phew

Hopefully with this kind of work, he thinks he's doing his job and therefore won't run around in the pasture too much. I don't think it's fair to lock him up just to keep him from running around on his own. Like, I don't want to damage his lungs by riding him for my benefit but if he damages his own lungs playing with Rico, that sits better with me. I won't prevent him from being a horse but I won't put him under additional stress while the air is bad. If his lungs feel iffy in the pasture, he'll stop playing but if they feel iffy undersaddle, he'll probably try to push through it because he's been reinforced for it. 

I'm thinking good thoughts for those being affected by the fires. And also thinking good thoughts that we get early rain this year! We could really use some summer rains in general to keep the kindling down and cool us down too. 

Poles for Everyone

I put out poles a couple of weeks ago. Now, by poles, I mean "poles" because they are just little sticks that hold up baby trees. They were free when I was riding Rico and on a crazy budget and they've held up for the last what, eight years? Pretty good deal! 

There are six of them left, so I figured I should set them out and if I like using them, I should see about investing in some real poles. Even when TC and I leave the ranch, my niece will be learning to ride there so poles will be helpful for her. But she is only eighteen months so isn't anywhere near trot poles yet. 

I set up three poles on a circle of death of sorts, then put the other three poles in the middle as trot poles. And then I tormented both horses with them! 

That split behind is really exciting! He could try a
little harder to avoid stepping on the pole though

While I focus on the steering, the canters like this
jeez TC

Sunny at least knows how to jump, so he's been downright fun to do the circle of death on. It's been really helpful because he is an inherently lazy creature who doesn't care if I think he's doing a good job (he's starting to let his guard down a bit, I think he's just been ridden by a lot of people in his day so he just sits in the back of the classroom and gets his work done while TC sits at the front of the class with his hand up like the nerd he is). He does seem to think the poles are fun though so it helps him stay up in front of my leg. 

He's a compact little thing so the trot poles, set for TC's collected trot, are a bit long for him which is perfect as I start trying to get him to let me vary his stride length in trot. I can definitely get a little difference in stride length in canter, but man his trot has one set stride length and a wide variety of tempos. I'd really love it to be the exact opposite of that. 

So we're doing a lot of making a tiny trot before the poles, then trying to push forward over them, and back to the tiny trot on the other side. I haven't done it enough to say it's working, but it's definitely more fun than endless forward and back around the arena. 

It's really challenging our straightness, he likes
to lean against my left leg tracking left, who knew?

Pretty uphill for just kind of steering and pushing
him forward

TC, on the other hand, has no natural ability to jump unless you count jumping out of his paddock from a stand still when he was four or the year and a half of leaping (over nothing) he did in his youth. He has done a lot of trot poles though so we've got that going for us! I mostly just want him to do them every day for his fitness and to work on the DAP going on in his working trot. 

The canter poles are what I find most interesting on him. While he is absolutely terrible at them in so many ways, I'm loving the canter I'm finding between the poles. It takes him a few rounds to start to relax his topline over the poles themselves, but even when the poles are ugly, the canter in between is fabulous. 

I also just like giving him time to canter without expectations on him. He will trot for days on a long/loose rein but he is WEIRD about the canter. There's so much management that goes into it and while I appreciate that he'll let me influence him, I don't love that he can't just freaking canter without input. I'd like to get him out to the horse park (that was going to be my project this year but we have been saddleless enough that a membership didn't make sense) and let him go on the gallop track at some point but he gets weird even if I get into a half seat on him in the arena at the canter. 

So the poles are helping him be more aware of his feet and his own balance rather than depending on me. Whether that will significantly positively impact the dressage, who knows, but for me, I like that it's giving him something to think about on his own vs me always telling him what each foot should be doing. 

I can't emphasize how little I was doing, it's kind 
of annoying honestly

Go TC go!

At this point, I'm leaning heavily toward getting some more poles! It's nice to be able to just leave them out in the arena (I have them strategically placed so they're easy to ride around) and I figure I'll keep a canter and a trot exercise set up at all times. I drag the arena about every other week (two horses five days a week doesn't use up the arena all that much lol) so I can reset the exercises then. And honestly both TC and Sunny stand quietly while I mess around with the poles so even if I have an idea on a whim, I can just change it up. 

For now, my six poles are making riding really fun right now so we'll keep on keeping on and I'll start looking at getting a set of real poles soon enough!

Changing Up the Routine

I've decided to put TC on a fitness schedule with some postural rehab exercises sprinkled in. My acupuncturist thought he needed to be fitter to start to see the improvements we've made. We are still battling some stuff, one being his neck apparently bothering him (he sees the PT on September 7th so we will get some answers there), the other being the saddle fit issues. The saddle I have on trial IS letting him build muscle, so that's great news, but it's not a perfect fit. Local trainer thinks it's low behind, which is something Mary said would be a thing with him, but my main issue with it right now is that it slides forward aggressively. 

The bands help keep the saddle back at least lol

I'm not sure if it's the saddle or his conformation, or maybe both. His girth groove is right behind his elbow and his shoulder comes back further than that. So everything slides forward into/onto his shoulder. My sticky pad doesn’t seem to be helping that anymore, I’m not sure if it’s because with more downward transitions, there’s more opportunity for it to slide forward or with more work, he’s getting sweatier and my sticky pad isn’t working so well. I'm going to get another sticky pad and see if that one works better. 

I'm considering buying a crupper just to see if that's an option. I mean, obviously the best option is to have a saddle that doesn't want to slide forward. But I'm starting to think that such a thing might not exist unless I go with a point billet. Maybe this is why my last saddle didn't slide forward, the point billet pinned it behind his shoulder. But that's not good either! I may end up finding that I can pin a saddle behind his shoulder with a point billet (restricting the shoulder) OR I can have a saddle that slides forward over the shoulders. Neither are ideal. 

Obviously TC says that sliding forward over the shoulders is better than pinning a saddle behind the shoulders, but I'm not interested in buying a saddle that slides forward until it is made very clear to me that EVERY saddle is going to do this. The saddle fitter comes next weekend so we'll have a chat about it. From there I'll either let him adjust it and we'll try it for another month, or we'll be back to the drawing board/bareback saddle. 

Clicker training square halts

He was very proud of himself

The saddle thing feels outside my control, but what is in my control is what TC and I are doing each day. I'm implementing some things for the month of September that should improve his fitness and hopefully strengthen his topline now that we (hopefully) have that ability. 

I tend to go through phases of implementing something and then changing things too quickly to see whether the things I implemented worked. Yes, I did go to graduate school for experimental and research psychology, why do you ask?

So I wrote a checklist down on my whiteboard and gave myself a schedule to follow. 

Schedule: 

day off x 2

dressage ride x 3

trail ride x 1

long line x 1

I tried to do a Monday-Sunday schedule but my current schedule changes too much. I think when/if I start a new job, I will be able to set up a schedule, but for now I am still on my highly flexible but also highly variable schedule. 

He was tired from my lesson (this was the day after)
but he still felt pretty good!

This is my grooming checklist:

- stand on balance pads in front while I curry/brush

- stand on balance pads behind while I brush out tail 

- pick feet

- do PT exercises x 3

- do sternum/shoulder lifts (I've taught him to lift his shoulder when I scratch under his sternum) x 2

- belly lifts and butt tucks x 2

Riding checklist: 

- walk down the road and back in bands

- warm up for 5 minutes (working up to 15 minutes) in bands

- trot over trot poles during trot work (I'm leaving them out in the ring) 

- 30 steps of rein back x 2

For the trail riding I will just let him relax, we have tons of hills behind the ranch but I'd like to take him out to the trail facility when I have time to! 

And for the long lining, it'll be a lighter day, about 30 minutes of clicking for posture and working on balance in downward transitions (because it's tough to do them in the saddle with it sliding forward). 

It was kind of a stretchy day

I think I’ll implement this for a month and then start brainstorming changes to make in an intelligent way. For example, maybe I want to try a new bit, maybe I want to add an exercise from Jec’s book on equine fitness (right now the only one is the reining back). I then want to experiment with reducing the exercises to figure out what is necessary to do when. I'm sure it'd be best to add one thing at a time but I am not that person. Plus, none of this takes up a huge amount of time (tacking up takes a bit longer now but that's about it) or does any damage so it should be good. 

Aaaand we'll see about the saddle. The fitter for the saddle I've been borrowing should be coming out next weekend and if he thinks he can get it to not slide, I'll definitely give it another shot. If it's sliding because he's grown out of it, that'd be amazing, it's a fairly easy saddle to adjust (I could do so on my own actually). But if it's sliding due to gravity/conformation... well, maybe I'll just have to order a crupper. 

Rebuilding the Collection

On Tuesday I had another lesson with the local trainer! It was potentially my last one for a little bit, I keep warning her that I might disappear not because I don't like her but because we have so much potentially working against us coming up. First, I might be taking a new job next week, I'm leaning against it but who knows, really. Second, we may be losing our saddle next week (more on that later). Third, the air quality could go at any given point. But I figure I was available this week and so we made it happen!

TC honestly only got ridden twice since our lesson last Tuesday. He had his acupuncture Wednesday, then got the day off Thursday, then I rode him Friday morning before leaving for the airport and then Monday when I got back. Luckily he's got his giant pasture and about every other morning he canters around like a loon so he was good to go on Tuesday for our lesson. 

Look at this damn tail

Where we got his trot to, wow

I was happy to feel that TC was a little more normal in the trot when I picked it up. She asked whether he was normal this time because last time she thought he was quite behind my leg and I assured her that he actually is quite forward thinking. We agreed last time that he was just nervous being there. This time he did feel better and I told her as such. 

We started with some trot work posting and I got reminded to keep my eyes up and my collarbone long. When I did that, I screwed up my posting mechanic which was annoying, so we focused on leaving my posting mechanic alone from my knee to my sternum and instead working on just influencing where my head was placed on my body. This has been a long time issue of mine so none of it was surprising, but TC felt way better with my new position so hopefully this time it will stick. Fingers crossed! 

We discussed what we had gone over last time, which was a focus on longitudinal balance. I told her that TC was tough for me to feel anything on, especially his longitudinal balance. It was infuriating to go ride my client's PSG horse, a horse who I say would lean on barbed wire if you'd let her, and feel the MOMENT that the horse lost her balance. 

TC is just super polite and doesn't change anything about the connection or the feeling under you when he loses balance, he just drops his withers a bit. She challenged me to focus on other things, can I feel his front feet landing softer? can I feel his hind legs better when he's balanced? can I feel anything under my seat or thigh? TC may not tell me about it in the typical ways, but I will be able to figure it out over time. I think this is a major goal of mine this fall and something that will be key to making the return to Third level for us. 

He's too cute, I have to look at him

She said she wanted to play with that in sitting trot more but that first we should canter him. I put him in left lead canter and he was a bit balky but not too bad, definitely worse there than at home so I let her know that he was still figuring out how to canter there. 

For the left, she wanted him to reach more to the left rein so encouraged me to leg yield him off my outside leg into my inside rein and almost encourage him to fall a bit that way. She likes to show the horses (well, horses like TC) that they can find balance and stability in reins by setting themselves up to lose a little bit of balance laterally and then letting them find the rein they're hiding behind. She's really good at navigating the connection issues in a rather simple way, I really like that! 

To the right, he felt fan-freaking-tastic to me so he was probably on the forehand. I told her as such and she agreed that he could carry a bit more weight behind. She thought it was that he wasn't reaching so much with his left (outside) front leg and that was interesting to me. I've always been told that they should snap the outside front leg off the ground quickly but I never thought about the reach there. She encouraged me to use my outside thigh to bring his outside front leg more forward. 

WOW that helped so much and I felt like I had a lot more collection to play with. Definitely something I'm going to play with at home. 

Learning to reach with that left front leg

Reaching for the left rein, I love it

We took a break and then talked about the sitting trot. She wanted me to imagine his back as a trampoline and to help him understand how to push up against my seat a bit. Against is the wrong word... but we talked about how on a trampoline, if you want it to bounce you higher, you stay a little stiffer in your joints vs if you want it to stop bouncing you, you absorb the bounce in your joints. Could I allow my seat to be heavier to help him find a little more bounce to encourage him to raise is back? She said that might help vs thinking suction (I already think so much suction with this horse if it were possible to lift him off the ground, we'd be in the circus already). 

I told her I was very unfit, and I am. This summer has been tough to put TC and myself first because two of my main clients were going for some big things (upper level pony club rating and USDF Silver medal, both succeeded but I sacrificed a lot for that to happen). I'm now back in a program for developing my own fitness but I'm still six months away from feeling actually fit enough to ride my exhausting horse. 

That was okay, we did a lot of trot walk transitions working on getting a good quality trot and then giving us both a break. The first bit of sit trot to the left was tough on both of us. She pointed out that I needed to be able to add leg and not have his balance change and I was struggling to find the timing for that. 

We took a break and then went to the right and I really figured it out! I had to be quick to recycle the energy that my leg was creating but being quick without letting the aids get chaotic was tough to figure out without my once strong core helping me out. Definitely putting that at the top of my fitness list. 

This is a very different look for my horse and I am
HERE FOR IT, even triangles and IFV wow okay

Sitting this trot is no joke

We let him be done after that and just chatted. I found her after my lesson to give her money and we had another fun conversation where she showed me some horses. We talked about clients and how tricky it can be to teach professions and take lessons as a professional. So far I really feel like she's ready to be creative, think outside the box, and let me be involved in my horse's training. 

So that's exciting! We'll see how things go over the next week. TC got his teeth done on Wednesday, we have some plans for next week that may or may not pan out, and then next weekend, we have the saddle fitter out again. I am not comfortable buying the saddle or ordering one through this brand so we will either give the saddle back or see if the fitter can get it fitting better and then we'll do another trial month. 

Jumping Lesson in San Diego!

When I decided to head down to San Diego, I told L that I wanted to do three things: eat lots of tacos, see lots of ponies, and take a jumping lesson from her trainer (if that was possible, and it was)! 

It was so fun!!

Definitely jumping ahead but that's... going to take
me a while I think lol

I had kind of been slacking on my jumping lately AND I realized that I’d only been jumping Flounder since my return to jumping. I love the fish but he’s obviously just one horse who has one type of jump and I was worried it’d take me a bit to figure out this new horse. I also worried that riding at a nice hunter barn in purple full seat breeches would be real awkward. 

Trainer DY is the NICEST person in the world and also so so good at what she does. She put me on the horse who actually attacked L, he can be a little snarky on the ground (not a surprise) but the moment I was on him, he was such a good boy. Not spooky, not lazy or hot, high enough tone to be super rideable but not so high tone that he felt tense. I immediately felt comfortable on him even though my stirrups were very short the correct length for jumping small fences. 

Dante's ears are so cute!

DY had us warm up with some forward and back, alternating between doing some work in sitting trot/full seat in canter and posting trot/jumping position in canter. I got my bearings but remembered that my short little jump stirrups took away the effectiveness of my leg aids and Mirlo slowly realized that I was not very effective even if my butt felt educated. I always wonder what the horses think when I get on them in jump tack. Like oh shoot this butt knows what it's doing... LOL the legs don't though *slows down*

We built up slowly through the lesson, first riding over a cross rail from the trot, then the canter, then stringing two cross rails together, eventually ending up with a little course! My little jumper horse (who has showed extensively in the meter jumpers and some hunters and equitation I think) definitely had a very different jump from Flounder’s and I tried to explain what I was feeling so DY could understand what to tell me. She said that this horse was more of an upright jumper, so he padded off the ground more aggressively than a horse with a flatter jump. Flounder doesn’t feel super flat, but he definitely doesn’t have this drop in front of the jump, he’s a bit softer off the ground I guess? I don't have the words to describe it at this point. 

I much preferred the longer spots even though they
made me want to jump ahead

Much of what DY had to tell me was what Kate tells me in our lessons, so it was great to hear the same things in different words. Mostly I needed to not jump ahead, keep my eyes up, and keep him upright through the turns and to the fences (he wanted to lean left). I worked really hard to make sure that my lines were well ridden given that I was at a really nice hunter barn and I caught myself leaning through the corners sometimes, woops. DY emphasized the flatwork between the jumps and that kind of woke me up a bit. I'm a dressage rider, I can ride flatwork. So I redoubled my efforts and things got better. 

By the end I felt like I kind of got the hang of his jump. It was so fun to jump a different horse (although I still adore Flounder and am probably too attached to him at this point lol) and especially fun to be in a group lesson with one of my very best friends!! I told L that I hoped that the next time I visit, she and Dante will be jumping so big that it wouldn't make sense to have a lesson together, but maybe DY can still make it work. I definitely want to take more lessons from her! 

Such a good packer horse for me!

Jumping remains so fun for me, it's such a breath of fresh air with how I've been feeling about dressage. Although my post tomorrow about my lesson with my local trainer should read a little more positive. Still, it's fun to have jumping to fall back on as my fun horse activity these days (and Sunny's western dressage training, which is still going, I just haven't had time to post about him!). Major thanks to L and DY for making my weekend in San Diego even more fun by letting me jump, yay!

Post Pandemic Tacos and Ponies

This last weekend I got on a plane for the first time since January 2020! It was definitely a weird experience, but I was only on the plane for an hour because I went to visit L in San Diego! I hadn’t been down to see her since her wedding TWO YEARS AGO, it felt like way too long. 

My welcoming crew at the barn

I flew down Friday at 2:30 and she came to pick me up around 4. One of my favorite things about visiting horse friends is that they frequently pick me up from the airport and take me straight to the barn, and that’s what we did! We went to go see Dante and turn him out to roll. I hadn’t seen L’s new barn yet (and it’s not even that new at this point lol) so I got a quick tour of both the barn she’s currently at and the one next door that she used to be at. It’s such a nice barn! The arenas had good footing and the turnouts were super fancy (and TC proof, there was hot wire between the boards lol I will forever be obsessed with checking if fencing is TC proof). 

After playing with Dante and me making him smile until he was annoyed with me, we headed home to go get tacos. When I told L what I wanted to do this weekend, it was very simple: horses and tacos. I haven’t had really good tacos in a very long time, we have one or two restaurants up here that come close to the quality of tacos you can get in San Diego, but honestly nothing compares. We walked down with T and each got a taco and shared nachos. 

I already miss the food SO much

That evening L had a grad school zoom which T and I both attended, it was super fun but I got distracted by an equine physical therapy book that L showed me. I immediately ordered it because it went into specific detail on the muscles of the horse and what the development of each muscle can tell you about how your horse works. For example, the longitimus dorsi is the back muscle most commonly affected by saddle fit and the thoracic sling is what dictates whether the horse has a dip in front of the withers, not the cervical trapezius as I thought before. I definitely want to read this book when it comes to me and I’ll share what I find out. 

We definitely stayed up too late because we got to talking about a video game I couldn’t beat that I happened to have there with me and T offered to beat it for me (there’s way more to do after you beat it but I stopped playing it last year because my SO told me that he didn’t want to beat it for me and I think he thought that’d just motivate me to try harder and it did not). We did finally go to sleep though!

My horse was smaller than Dante, which I
appreciated lol

The next morning, we walked to get breakfast at a really delicious breakfast place. I don’t know why but I was super hungry on this trip, probably just being at a place with amazing food and finally getting to visit friends? I dunno, but I devoured my breakfast. 

After that, L and I were off to the barn again to take a lesson! Both of us actually! I had asked L if her trainer had lesson horses and if I could take a lesson and she said yes and signed us up for a semi private lesson. Because Dante is doing smaller confidence building work, he is jumping the same height I’ve been jumping on Flounder so it worked out perfectly. I’ll talk more specifically about the lesson tomorrow but it was AMAZING, I learned a ton and had so much fun. 

We stopped by the grocery store to pick up some supplies for the evening because we had a fire in the backyard with some friends, one of them being Carrie! We laughed that I’d escaped the falling ash in the bay to then just inhale a bunch of smoke from the fire when it’d blow at me, but it was worth it. We ordered pizza and ate chips and guacamole. L had picked up a pie from the store, which was so good I honestly looked into having one delivered to my house this week (and even texted the SO “I’m considering ordering us a pie” and he wrote back “wat?”) but the shipping was as much as the pie itself. Oh well. Carrie also made a chocolate mochi cake with peanut butter frosting which was AMAZING and has inspired me to eat more mochi in general. 

Thule dog is the most adorable

The next morning, we had pie for breakfast and then headed out to the barn! L had asked me to bring all my fun rider aids and I did! I brought my Equicube, my rider bands, and the Mary Wanless rider belt. 

You may wonder, did I get stopped by TSA for any of this stuff and the answer is yes I did. The Equicube must have looked like something I could smuggle stuff in because the poor TSA man pulled it out and looked at it with the most hilariously confused facial expression. He looked back at me, back at the cube, turned to see if any other agents might be able to explain this to him, then he took out a wand thing to rub all over it, shrugged to himself, and put it back. I figured it was better to just stay quiet than to go into grave detail about what the cube was and how it worked. 

We took Dante out and L warmed him up and then I gave her the rider aids one by one. I ended up leaving the Equicube with L because it was so helpful to her and we conspired to see if she could have her trainer use it in lessons and maybe buy one for the barn so she could use it. Fingers crossed!

I then got a turn on Dante and WOW he is so grown up now! I haven't ridden him since like... 2017? 2018? Because I saw L twice in 2019, once for her horsey bachelorette party when I had mono (so couldn't ride) and once for her wedding (we were too busy to ride). L has done such a fabulous job with him, he felt really good. 

Dante, you better like jumping or I'll
make you into a dressage horse
muahahaha

After riding, we came back home and then too soon, we were heading out to drop me off at the airport to fly home. The SO came to get me and I pretty much immediately went to bed and slept ten hours lol!

I forgot how much I adore visiting my friends. Things have obviously been tough with TC’s continued muscle issues this year and it was so nice to both get away from the stress of that and to have L to talk to about it. She gave me a lot of really good ideas and I walked away feeling a bit more hopeful.

I had a super ride on him yesterday and I have a lesson with local trainer today, then tomorrow he gets his teeth done. 

Not Again

The air quality has been borderline recently. We've been spending a lot of time in the 40 to 80 AQI range with it being really bad on occasion. Not enough to warrant the recommended six weeks off to recover lungs, but enough where I won't ride that day and I do a light day or another day off the day after. 

Honestly, nothing has made me want to leave this area more. The traffic sucks but with the SO's job, we are stuck near a large city anyway so the traffic will always suck. The boarding situation in the bay area blows but the ranch has been working out really well so far and I'm exploring other options that are closer as well. Living here without working in tech is annoying at best, but I'm interviewing and should move into tech soon. 

Highly recommend getting an air
quality monitor, I'm going to order one
specifically for the ranch so I can obsess
over TC's air quality

But now, with *fire season* fucking up my fall every year??? I immediately was like fuck this place. I up and told the SO the other day that I was ready to move to Canada (we are planning to move to Vancouver at some point in our lives, at least by retirement age, no rush) because of fire season. But then I found out that Vancouver was on fire too. Great. 

I normally have winter be our lightest season. It's not that shows stop or anything, the only month you can't show up here is December actually. Our last shows of the year are in mid November and they start again in January. 

But I don't love riding in the winter, our barns are really not all that well set up for it. We don't have indoor arenas, just covered arenas, or not covered arenas like at the ranch. Paddocks get super muddy (and omg don't get me started on the pastures in the area, they are not set up for rain!), it rains but it's not horribly cold so figuring out blanketing is tricky, bleh. I like staying at home in the winter. I do ride through the winter but I like taking the pressure off. If there's a bad storm or if I'm like "ew no," I'll let him have extra time off. 

Things have been so good, I am so eager to continue

But it works out that the horses get kind of a break over the winter and then we come back into more serious work in March and then start showing in May and we show through the fall. May to November is a good amount of showing that we can do without the weather being terrible (although I tend to try to show on the coast if we are showing in June or July due to the heat). 

The first year we had really bad air that took us out of riding was 2018. That didn't start until the end of October and then it went away in the first storm in late November. So a month. I was moving TC then so I gave him extra time off and all was well. We didn't lose any months in 2019 so that was nice. 

2020 though, wow what a shit year! For everyone, not just fire-wise. Everything was shit. But the fires started in AUGUST. TC was not back in full work until December due to the fires! First because the fires were much closer and much worse, but also because it didn't rain until November again. It just doesn't rain here from like April through November. 

See the lightest colored mountains behind me?
Those are my air quality mountains, if I can't see
them, I have to check the AQI stat!

This year, the fires are further away (so far, everything is so dry it's just kindling out there) but we are still starting to see the effects. It's raining ash, although as I've said before, thus far the air quality has been okay because the smoke is so high up in the air. But we are facing what at best will be a stop in riding for the fall. And then with TC being at the ranch, I won't be able to ride when it's raining or at least a few days afterwards. So we might be looking at being off of real work until March. And that's what sucks. I can handle on season off, either fall or winter, but not two! 

So I guess I have to be a winter rider and TC and I might need to find a place to go for the winter where we can keep training. Luckily there are three barns that are options (one being local trainer's barn, which would honestly be amazing but they'd have to have a paddock available and there aren't a ton) so if I find that I can't ride much this fall, I will move him for a few months. But if I can ride through the fall, I might just take a light winter and leave him at the ranch! 

He's doing so well right now, fingers crossed that
the air stays good!

Selflessly, but also selfishly, I hope that the fires die down immediately and don't return. I want to stop seeing people have to evacuate from their homes at the very least. And I also want to be able to ride my horse! 

Either way, the nebulizer is at the barn now and I've ordered his breathing supplement that he'll be on for probably the rest of this year. Ugh.