The Waddling Preggo

O has reached her 7th month of pregnancy and my god SHE SURE SHOWS IT.

Does your gut hang low, does it wobble to and fro

This is her blog and she has hardly been on it lately, but it's hard to write about horses that are currently doing literally nothing except eating and growing a baby.

As of late, the most important thing in her life is food. Somewhere distantly second to that is companionship from both myself and from Dylan. When open, she tends to be super hormonal and hyperemotional, and hates to be left by herself. Pregnant, she seems to not really care much, or not have enough energy to do much about it anyway. I can take Dylan away from her and aside from a few errant whinnies, she doesn't care. Usually she is a total traiter and goes down to the end of the property to talk to my neighbor's horses, which are a road and a fence away. But I think she still enjoys Dylan's company, even though at feed times she tends to make horrible mean faces and empty threats at him. 

Dirtyyyyy

This is her winter coat

JUDGING YOU

She goes out with Dylan for his hacks around the neighborhood, just to keep her in some kind of tone. It's starting to become harder for her to keep up with speedwalker Dylan though - he always is in a hurry to get to wherever he thinks we are going, and last night in particular I was practically dragging O along behind us. 

Her wee fetus is now sort of medium-dog size, maybe twenty-odd inches long and somewhere between 30-40lbs in weight or so. If you think that sounds huge, it will be closer to 100lbs when born, so it has a ways to go yet! O also just had her fall deworming and latest EHV-1 vaccine, so basically now we just wait. And wait. And wait.

Believe me though - March will DEFINITELY be here before we know it!!!

Countdown to Sunrise Ridge HDT: Two Days!

It's been a long time since I had a real countdown to a rated show. Like, a long time. A really, really long time! I think the last rated show from any discipline was the 2009 AECs. Everything I've done since has been schooling shows, no national organizations involved. That's all about to change! (And of course, by rated I mean ADS sanctioned... 'rated' being the catch-all term for a show sanctioned by the national mother organization.) I haven't really even had the ability to blog about my prep work yet - I've had little ability to prep yet so far this week, which has been super hard. 

I am feeling pretty dang nervous for this show, I'll admit it, although I am feeling relatively in control of my pre-show checklist. It's SO hard to go into a brand new sport - there is SO much to learn, so much to remember, and so much that is still confusing to me. I know exactly what to expect from USEA or USDF shows - hell, even rated h/j shows, from the handful I've peppered into my regular show schedule over the years - but the ADS is an entirely new thing for me. ADS, like many of the other major US sport organizations, is under the USEF umbrella, and like the other major sport organizations, it has an extremely lengthy rulebook that covers each sect separately (pleasure shows, combined driving, etc). There is SO much information in there, it's hard to get your head around it. I like knowing the rules - I hate being left in the dark on things - so I have spent a lot of time pouring over the rulebook and committing things to memory.

Still, it's HARD to remember stuff. It's hard to remember 20 sets of cones, and it's hard to remember not to forget the compulsory turning flags on the marathon, and it's hard to remember the order in which things need to go. It's all uncharted territory for me!

That said, I think I have things mostly under control. We did go ahead and put O on Altrenogest, so we don't have to worry about any, erm... hormonal upsets. That's a large load off my back... she was due to come back into heat this very weekend and I was not looking forward to that one bit - especially since she'll be stabled behind a gelding who was only just recently cut!

I installed my chrome rein rail a few days ago as well. Considering the fact that I am about as handy as a cream cheese bagel, this is just as much of an accomplishment as the winch install was. But it looks AWESOME!

For reference; this is what the old one looked like:

Ugly AND broken

I put all of the original bolts back into place and painted over them. When I have more time, I can putty the holes and pain over them again - I just don't have that kind of time right now though. Nobody will notice at an HDT, especially not with the presentation portion being assessed during the actual test itself. They do inspect your gear before your dressage and your marathon, but they're looking for things like safety issues, not your lack of style. 

We had our final drive today, after several days off - it's been raining and we've been stupidly busy. O was a wonderful lady, solidly putting in a few relaxing miles on a nice contact before we headed back to the barn. A few days before a show, I always tend to get a little nervous, and rather than drill my horse in their dressage work, I opt for lighter things like hacks and conditioning workouts to keep them fresh - and to keep me from letting my nerves get in the way and start up with the nit-picking. Tomorrow, she'll be lunged, and we leave Friday afternoon for the showgrounds.

I made a few adjustments to the harness and I think everything is sitting well now. I raised the tugs a little bit, and was pleasantly surprised to find it made it ride much smoother - way easier to balance it while in it. I also stuck my saddle pad back on just for schooling purposes - we'll remove it for the dressage, but I think it is worth it to use it during regular schooling at home. Between the new ear bonnet, the new rein rail, and the outfit I'll have on, everything will look mighty nice at the show.

Today I cleaned out my trailer tack room, printed off all the show info, fixed my winch issue, had my trailer spare repaired, drove O, did barn chores, and cleaned my harness. I'll admit, I'm pretty sold on my synthetic harness now - it was stupidly easy to clean. All I did more or less was hang it on a gate, turn the hose on, and spray it down, then wipe it clean. Voila! It took me less than 10 minutes and it looks brand new again. 

Tomorrow I need to: pack up all hay/grain/buckets/haybags/etc, clean out the back of the trailer, get shavings, clean my cart, clip/trim/tidy up O, and probably get some raingear because there's something like a 90% chance of rain on Saturday (awesome). Among many other things... there's a lot to do before we leave on Friday!

Thankfully P (who is at day 335 today) looks like she's going to hold out on us until at least next week. She finally has fluid in her udders (FINALLY!), so I have been able to test them. The fluid is in the water/sticky amber colored stage - far, far from milk - and is nearly off the charts on the pH scale. That means we still have a fair bit of cooking left to do, thankfully. Cook all you want, baby! Don't come out until next week!

Day 314

I have updates I need to write about for O, including an awesome lesson and a terribly naughty thing, but if I put both P's updates and O's updates all together it would be WAAAAY too long. Therefore I decided to split them up, and focus on P for tonight, since her updates a little more, erm... time sensitive.

She is at day 314 (or well, day 315 in a few hours!). We are rapidly closing in on day 320, which is when the foal is considered full-term and past the premature mark. She won't go before then, which is great, because at the beginning of the month I was holding my breath a little!

These photos were taken a few days ago. You can see how decidedly pointy her belly was that day!

Today she is rounder, but the baby has moved back some:

Interesting too to see where her pattern of dapples stops - right where the outline of the foal is!

Her vulva is relaxing, and her tailhead is getting significantly mushier every day.

Gratuitous hooha shot

Her udder has been growingly slowly every day, always a little bigger. There is no fluid that can be expressed yet, but that's not a biggie - her milk will come in as we get closer. 

Day 314

The most significant change in the past few days is the fact that she suddenly got WHOA studdish. One of the other mares has been in flaming heat, and P went NUTS over her, huffing and nickering and arching her neck. She licked and nibbled the mare all over (they were sharing a fenceline), sniffed under her tail, did the flehmen response, and even went so far as to grab her crest and make a few hops like she was going to mount her from the other side of the fence! All this sluttiness also brought O into heat - P doesn't seem interested in her beyond a few huffs and nickers, but remember this, because it will come into play in the next post.

Every day, we get a little bit closer! I'd say she goes within the next 3 weeks. Maybe even two weeks! 

Yesterday also marked the one year anniversary since I went to go retrieve her from her leasing-gone-wrong situation. Never again.... 

Back to Work

O's leg has mostly returned to normal, finally. She and the others spent Monday in the barn due to a torrential all-day downpour, and because of this I decided to wrap her fronts to keep the leg from filling back up again. A few hours later, S texted me to report that O was destroying her bandages. Really mare... sigh. Although I guess I'm not surprised, she doesn't ever really wear wraps and she doesn't ever go in a stall unless the weather is terrible. I've seen her grab her blanket with her teeth and pull on it hard whenever she decides she wants it off, so it's not surprising that she'd do the same for wraps. She is a special strawberry, that's for sure. In pulling her wraps, she ripped the wounds open again, *of course*. Despite that, the leg looked halfway normal Tuesday morning, and I decided to trailer her to the small covered arena down the road and lunge her. Everything is a swamp back at the home barn and there's nothing to be done about it. After two whole weeks off, I was not keen to put her between the shafts without having lunged her first. I like living, thanks very much.

She was hot and looky and trembling all over with nervous excitement when I unloaded her, and I parked her in front of her haybag. I never work my horses on an empty stomach - they always are allowed to tank up on hay before we work, as an ulcer preventative. She drives me nuts when we go places and she gets like that though, because she won't eat her hay and instead has to stare at EVERYTHING with huge enormous eyes and big blows. Not much to be done about it either except just try to help her relax, and put the haybag in front of her. She's been to this barn before, plenty of times, but she has been off for two weeks. I didn't really expect any different though, to be honest. I made sure I let her stuff her face with hay for an hour before we left (she also refuses to eat while on the trailer), and dosed her Pro CMC before I went to work her since she was not even considering her bag of hay. Normally when we go places and she has been in steady work, she is looky and curious and then will settle in and eat for awhile before we go to work. I haven't been trailering her many places as of late, and she's been off work, so I was prepared for some goofy, erratic behavior.

I know everybody thinks I am nuts for being so neurotic about ulcer protection but it pays off to be that way, especially with this horse. Even with ALL I do for her in terms of protection - and it's a LOT of stuff - I still worry about it. And if I wasn't so neurotic about it, she'd be burned from mouth to butthole with gastric problems, I can guarantee it. I don't know how people with similarly neurotic beasts can ever get away with less preventative care. I suppose a lot of them *don't* get away with it - every which way I turn, there's another classic ulcer case in just about every barn I go to. Ulcers are debilitating and painful... if only people paid as much attention to the soundness of their horses' guts as they do the soundness of their legs. I guess you only know what you know, until you learn.

Anyway. I digress.

I am a good beast

The covered arena is only really about lunging size, so there's not a ton of space in there. But it's all good dry footing, so it works great for situations like this when the bigger arenas are flooded out. I started off lunging her in the Fauxssoa to get the willies out, and then stuck my driving lines on her. She did not so much have the zooming willies as she did the veering snorties - everything was scary looking, and she couldn't stop staring at everything going on outside of the arena. This passed within relative short order, and while she was still spooky she at least was paying attention. Once the driving lines were on, she was wonderful, and we did lots of transitions, bending, and changes of direction. The long lining is infinitely helpful with the work we do when hitched - it's all the same stuff, I'm just on the ground. Our dressage tests at Training level are very simple: halts, a reinback, 40 meter circles at the trot, and some working walk and free walk. We worked on all of these things, specifically quiet transitions, and she was great. The leg went down all the way to regular size while she was working, and has stayed down. Hooray!


Today I was VERY happy that I had opted to lunge her yesterday. It was foggy and warm this morning, and BOTH mares had the zooms for a little while. P is 307 days pregnant and still got her bucks on this morning! (Not for very long... a few passes back and forth was quite enough for her!)

Run Monster Dog run!

We got her the ball to entertain herself.... aaaaand she hasn't touched it once

Gravity is not kind

After they settled and munched hay for awhile, I pulled O out and hooked her. She was not surprisingly quite hot and jittery still... SO glad I lunged her AND that she got her bucks out in the morning. The neighbors were shooting, and in the foggy still morning every noise was super loud. She normally doesn't care about the noise, but this morning she got the jerking shudders every time a gun went off. A truck went by with a muddy, rattling water tank attached to a trailer, and she almost had a heartattack. The neighbor with the donkeys was moving haybales around with his tractor, and I thought she was going to fall over and die when she saw that sight. Mares...

Despite that, she was actually a pretty good girl. When she gets super hot, she bubbles over with energy and has a very hard time stopping and standing still. When she is quiet, she'll stand immobile for hours if you want her to, but when she is not, she'll halt promptly but then burst forward again of her own accord. She'll do it over, and over, and over again, and if she gets frustrated enough she'll turn her head around and bite the shafts or harness (with her ears pricked forward, never in a grumpy way... weird mare). But, if you're just patient, and insist that no, we really *do* have to stand... then she'll stand. Over the course of the drive, she melted into a much more amicable beast, and was doing some great walk-trot-walk transitions, stretching, halting, backing up, walking off, and halting again (which is the sequence we have to do in our Training 2 test). She walked home on a long floppy rein, quite a lot more relaxed than when we went out.

Feels good to be back in the box seat, that's for sure!

Day 303

Pmare is at day 303, and getting bigger. I have NO idea HOW she is getting bigger, but she is!

Today was the first day the mares got to be naked in two weeks. The weather has been so horrible and cold that they stayed blanketed all the time. They were VERY happy about it, P especially. Both mares are shedding, and if you look on P's shoulder you can see her yearly dapples coming in!

Day 303

She is steadily building her bag. It's a little bigger every day. Still has a long way to go but it is definitely growing. I'm going to guess she'll go within the next 4 weeks.

As for O, the weather is improving but she happened to do this lovely gem to herself:

Paper-skinned beast

She seems to be quite fine, she just stuck her leg somewhere she shouldn't, scraped it up, and it blew up. She has paper skin so every time she gets a cut, BOOM! Massive swelling. Oh well, what's a few more days off anyway....