Goodbye 2013

2013 had it's ups. But a hole heck of downs. Lets recap why I'll take a drink at midnight to say F you 2013 and welcome in 2014. 

January - Way to start out the year January. January 13th I fall in the shower and later that week after giving into going to the doctor I learn my wrist is broken. I never got put in a full cast since the bone that was fractured didn't impair my mobility and after two weeks or so of wrapping, icing and pain killers I was able to begin lightly using my hand as normal. I get bronchitis and double ear infectons. After missing work from the amount of pain killers I was on, a week of terrible weather and some other things, I loose my job working in the dean's office at the college. Looking back it was best thing that could of happened all around, just bad timing. Simultaneously I drop all my classes for the semester because in the first few weeks I'm already too far behind to make the semester count. 

February - On the 8th I rode Echo for the first time! Pretty much the highlight of the month. I put two more rides on her in the month. Nothing super exciting because my wrist was still regaining strength and it was cold! The 27th my grandpa had his heart attack. 

March - One of the roughest emotional months I've ever gone through. After a stint and pacemaker being put into his heart my grandpa got to go home. After more incidents of gulbladder (worlds most evil organ) attacks and infections I make the move into my grandparents house. Not everyone is as close to their grandparents as I am and always have been. My mom makes the drive from North Carolina for her school's spring break to visit and see my grandpa due to his health. If I had not lost my job I would of never been able to stay with them and provide the help I was able to. 

April - Lots of doctor appointment visits and drives for my both of the grandparents. My grandma is convinced that I need to just move in with them permanently. I go to my first Red Wings hockey game in Detroit - it was amazing! I get bronchitis a second time mid month. Around the same time I start exploring moving to South Florida for a job offer. After six weeks of waiting to accept, I say screw it and am offered my old job in Lexington.

May - After many tearful goodbyes to my grandparents, dad and other family, friends and my horses I pack my car and leave for Lexington on the 8th. On the 13th I walk back into Equibase after being gone since December of 2010. Working there again is rough at first because everything comes back fast but things had changed and putting it all together was a rough period of time. Start apartment searching but have no luck at first. I go to the USHJA International Derby finals which is a complete blast at KHP - forgot how much I love that place. End of the month is marred by my friend Lyssette loosing her horse Carlos :(

June - On the 9th my ponies finally arrive to Kentucky after a 20 hour trailer ride. I used my special access powers to Churchill Downs and my friends and I had a fun tour of the roof of Churchill Downs. Echo's uterine infection returns and the vet lays out a course of treatment including lots of flushes. We have to go through two rounds of flushing for her to get all nice and clean. End of month is my birthday - and just go for a nice dinner with friends. 

July - I finally get moved into my new apartment. I drove up to Michigan and my dad and I loaded a U-Haul and took off the next morning to Kentucky. My cat's were thrilled to see me and Holly co-piloted her way back to Lexington. My work schedule is non-existent. By end of the month I pretty much have to demand a set schedule with set days off. I need routine. Normal fun things in the month of July - my favorite holiday, the Junior League skedaddle bred show (Saddlebred's), and Fasig Tipton sales. Despite lot's of bad horse racing news, crappy hot weather and a few things here and there, July was one of the better months of the year!

August - Month starts out by me having to separate the two horses. Echo and Dakota were unbearable to be around in the barn if they couldn't see each other. Dakota gets booted out with the geldings. Echo learns how to break out of the cross ties / wash stall in the barn and repeats many times. August 12th I attempt a second job working an additional 20 hours a week at the grocery store. I start classes at Midway College and take 12 credit hours worth of classes. So busy I rarely see my horses. I go full time at Equibase. The girl I couldn't stand walked out and finally quit. Dakota starts showing signs of lameness.

September - Ok so the part time job didn't last long. After not really seeing the horses and going full time I quit the part time job after 2-3 weeks and let Labor Day weekend be the end of that. Dakota has become more and more visibly lame and wheels start spinning on what to do with him. September also marks a year since I've owned Echo. 

October - Month of Breeders' Cup preparations. Fun. Makes work even more fun - and hellish. Echo left for operation boot camp in Texas with my friend Amanda. 

November & December - No major changes except Echo being naughty in Texas. Mom and Grandparents visit me in November for Thanksgiving and Dad comes for Christmas. Work is the usual. Lots to do, never enough time. Missing Echo & hoping to see her sometime in early 2014!

Happy Holidays

Happy Holiday's Blog Land!

While I am stuck working most of this holiday season I've been lucky to spend it with some family and friends and 3/4 of my animal team. While I'm missing my lovely MareFace I sent her lots of love via text message which at least made me feel better!

My Dad trying to convince me he's not afraid of horses on Christmas Eve

Dakota got his evening timothy / alfalfa cubes topped with goodies for Christmas. Unfortunately for him I decided to feed it to him in a bucket instead of his normal ground feeder. Enjoy the video of him trying to get the apple wedged into the hay!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a safe and happy New Year's!

-Allison Dakota & Echo

The S List

Well Echo is finally on a Shit List. She's been pretty well behaved for my friend A that has her rode her today for the first time since her arrival. Instead of summarizing everything I'll copy / paste some of what she said to me in our Facebook conversation for everyone.

I did ride her today. She is very powerful and super green. An exciting combination. We did walk trot while on a lunge line. One very near explosion but we survived and worked until relaxed and trotting on a loose rein. Oddly gate bound. Her buddies were in their stalls eating hay though so can't blame the chick for a bitty fit. I just kept making it hard to be at the gate and easy to be away. Lazy bones made a choice to not go to the gate after some newly presented information about the gate surfaced. Funny.

When talking about a plan of how long to have her in Texas and what to do once she's back with me:

That sounds like a good plan. I honestly think she could be a professionals horse and really would thrive in an ambitious but careful program. I would like you to succeed with her and ride her not just breed. She has guts. The videos are the first two but I have more. I ask for trot the first time and she heard canter. Must be a lot of winter fuzz in her ears. She is probably a 1 star event horse or more.

I made the mistake of asking if she needed anything! Her

Mare face is on smart calm as of tonight and is on my shit list and boot camp list for the unforeseeable future. She showed me some pretty cute moves tonight. Athletic but not exactly what was reasonable lol. She would win if it came to a battle under saddle. These are the times I almost want them to be gangly and unbalanced. Easier to train than the power house she is now.

On ground driving:

First days are never pretty. I will get you video once she is figuring it out. She just doesn't relax on the bit and she leans and pulls on pressure and the popping shoulder and trying to go to gate. Rather educate her on the ground so I have brakes and bending in the saddle too later. I really enjoy ground driving over obstacles and safely being able to work out issues. Speaking of bit... Your mare face tried to suck the bit back into her molars and run away with me! She arched her neck an came behind the vertical then I hear a sucking noise! I tugged the bit with my hand and got it away from her. It just made me annoyed and aware turning away from the gate was a very touchy situation. Her brain turned on momentarily for evil doing I guess.

I laughed when I read this because it's Echo 10000% The rearing is new so I'm not too worried it's going to be a lasting habit.

My sister was most impressed with her up down up down rampage. She bucked then reared then bucked then reared. She was bobbing up and down. Why you ask? Because I dare suggest she enlarge her circle to the better footing. Oh heavens. She didn't progress forward or back just up and down. I laughed so hard I was bent down and Echo came on over to me and stood quietly in front of me. Hey brain came back on.. I am teaching her to stop if a person is bent over. Me no like horse drag me away if I'm caught in the lunge line. I fall...

The videos A sent me:

Pony Updates

Echo

Not a ton to update with her. Which I suppose is an ok thing. She has a fear of potbelly pigs and miniature donkey's. The donkey one she's pretty much over apparently. Her mane is still wild and growing straight up without flipping to one side. *facepalm* Note to never roach her mane again. My friend that has her has a mare she's trying to sell so once she's sold she will have more time to work Echo other than lunging and ground work here and there. 

Dakota

He still hasn't been injected. I don't know why but kept putting it off hoping he'd magically be sound. His shoes have been adjusted twice now, most recently last week. So Monday I decided to lunge him a little and see how he went. Front left is where he's lame so I started by warming him up to the left and when I asked him for a trot he didn't leap into his normal forward trot, instead he was doing a western pleasure jog. I let him go a few laps around but when I asked him to lengthen his strides and MOVE he was visibly lame. 

Stopped him and switched directions (ok he stopped and wheeled on his own as if saying he was uncomfortable and I let him go with it) - let him walk some more. I asked him to trot eventually and he started out being all western pleasurey but this time moved out on his own and though his strides were short and a little choppy, I could see him working out of it some. I worked him a little longer - long enough I can truthfully say I couldn't see anything wrong with his strides. 

Forced him to switch direction back to going left - he was pretty angry. Walked.... then trot and his trot was way better.

I'm now basically crossing my fingers for the same results tonight when I work with him. I also consulted one of the eventers at the barn and asked her if she had any coffin bone injection experience and she did with 2 horses - both with definite results. So now I'm thinking if it's something he's going to work out off I can have him injected to just give him an extra boost of comfort. I'll make my final decision tonight on the injections after I see if he works out of it all again. I'll post more updates then!

Wet pony after a cool evening bath.

Sporting his new sage green PONY sized polos. Most successful polo wrap ever with this horse. Pony size is definitely for him.

Bootcamp Departure

Echo left for Texas at approximately 6:30 yesterday morning and arrived to Texas before midnight. Sounds like she traveled like the rock star that she is and never really stressed. A will have her in isolation from the other horses for 14 days and then she will slowly be introduced into the herd of mares there.

It's early and I'm suppose to be asleep...

Please excuse my wrap job. Pretty damn good for a 6am job. Also none of my pillow wraps were the right size so I was using what I had since there there was no way around it that early in the day.

Here's the pictures I got from A of their rest breaks on the trip yesterday and one of her relaxing in her stall this afternoon in Texas.

Someone was worried about her nose getting to rubbed.

Operation Texas Bootcamp

Well...

Echo is heading to Texas for boot-camp  My lovely friend Amanda has agreed to take her for awhile while I'm concentrating on school and settling into Kentucky life better. 

Since she will have an open trailer next weekend. She is also taking Lovely Surprise to keep for herself :) I'm excited to be able to keep updates on Echo's filly.

It will be strange not having her around but I know she will be in great hands and getting to be worked with more consistently. 

I will keep the blog going with any and all updates I get from Texas and of course Dakota and I here at home.

Best picture I got yesterday of Echo's Mohawk.

Dakota Vet Visit

I planned on writing this post when I got home but the fact I only had 2 hours of sleep last night won and I crashed for 4 hours.

The vet - who I must take a moment to reiterate how amazing she is- came out this afternoon to look at Dakota. 

Took him out the end of the barn and I trotted him in a straight line. Then she had her assistant (a friend of mine as well) trot him so I could tell her if what she was seeing was better / average / worse than he normally appeared. He appeared much better in a straight line and I told her it was more obvious on a turn. 

I lunged him to the right first, on the gravel at a walk and he was ok- short strided, not head bobbing lame. Asked for a trot and you could immediately tell a difference. Switch directions and it got even worse.

Headed back to the barn to do a block on his front left affernal nerves. As she was sterilizing his leg she gave me a hard time for how clean he was and making her job too easy (he had gotten a bath in the morning). The block took affect (effect? Whatever I'm tired) a little faster than usual. His reaction to her testing his feeling was quite amusing. She didn't know if he was just being stoic or couldn't feel so she did same thing to right leg and he jerked, looking at he like 'ouch what the...' 

Lunge line time- starting to left this time. Walked him a minute or two and he leaped into the trot when I asked. Completely different horse. Little short stride in hind but improved there as well. Back to the barn to take Left hoof X-rays.

I had X-rays done in '09 to confirm the degree of rotation in his right hoof - and I flashed back to how naughty he was standing on the X-ray block. Finally after some distracting he cooperated and got the needed angles.

We reviews the X-rays and there was nothing noticeable. Good amount of sole, clean joints / no arthritis, no rotation, no discoloration to indicate anything in pastern or soft tissue. X-rays will be sent to radiology to confirm my vets beliefs. He had some filling just above his hoof / coronet band / coffin joint fluid. Next step will be to inject his coffin joint and see if his soundness improves. If not we will potentially ultrasound for soft tissue or do an MRI which isn't something I can afford at this point and not fully convinced it would be worth doing. Anything that requires an MRI to find I'm not going to be able to afford to fix and he will basically just officially be pasture retired - but we will cross that bridge if it comes.

Existing

Hello Blog World - it's been a few weeks, ok, many weeks... We're still alive and going, basically just existing. It took this long to get enough worthy updates to make a post, otherwise you would of been seeing a lot of 1 liner post about irrelevant things.

Me

School is going meh. I'll complete these first 8 week classes, but I'm not too confident in the grades I'll receive. I'm no longer working a second job since as of last week I'm full time again at Equibase. Hopefully being full time and a little more in hours and pay will make a difference. My friend Jenny is actually moving to Kentucky this month. She gave herself a deadline to be here and if she's not here, gave us permission to go snatch her. Still have my doubts until I see here standing in front of me.

Dakota

Mr. Dakota is lame. It's soft tissue and in the same leg he bowed a tendon in 3-4 years ago. Just below the knee and I'm guessing up into the knee where I can't feel. It's been going on a few weeks but 1) I haven't had time to have a vet out 2) I wanted to give liniment & poultice a valid chance. He was sound 99.99% of the time he was in Michigan and sound from his arrival until around August 1st. Basically he probably did something in a field and he's visibly sound at a walk so I didn't notice as fast as I should have. 

Vet is coming out Monday to take a look and I'll have the necessary diagnostics done to find out what he did. My hopes aren't too high. My gut is telling me it isn't a tendon and we could be dealing more with a ligament issue. 

Echo

My mareface has a Mohawk... a giant one. Her mane has not yet flipped over from me roaching it earlier this summer. Her mane is a good 5-6" tall and just keeps growing. Dakota's is barely 2-3" - I guess it is a good and bad thing Echo has such good hair growth - she just looks ridiculous instead of 'cute' like Dakota does with his.

I started her back on raspberry leaves aka the cheap version of Mare Magic. She's been a spooky mess leading her in and out of the barn - over the top. 

I've been doing nothing but ground work with her partly because she has forgotten to respect space and her manners have gone out the window. Lots of rope halter time and me 'beating on her' and her enjoying it instead of following a normal horse's reaction. She's the horse that will make me a non believer in the basics of natural horsemanship in the end. She does not respond to pressure. I try to get her to move away from pressure and she leans into it. Lots to work on!

Both horses are starting to get a little fuzzy with the shortening days. My mission this week is to buy Echo a turnout sheet / maybe a blanket so she has a full set for winter. Still debating on body clipping her. Fall vaccines and FEC coming up next week - fun fall times!

Sorry for all the writing and no pictures, I promise in the next one I'll have some photo updates.

The Year of Echo

Happy one year of Echo!

Ok so it's not 1 year to the date of her arrival, but September 23rd 2012 is the day Colleen went to see her for me in Paris KY and after seeing pictures of her and talking it over with Colleen on the phone I gave the go ahead that I'd take her and booked the shipper.

First pictures I saw of her / day I agreed to take her.

Her first day in Michigan. October 8th.

First ride!

Back in Kentucky - June 2013.

The best 2 horses a girl could own.

No You're Not Houdini

Sigh. Mares. I'm learning they really are more brilliant than the dead head geldings and I'm trying to decide if this is a good thing or not. 

Last night, grooming Echo, in the cross ties with the non velcro safety release. Same cross ties Mareface has broken out of twice before. I figure I'm a step ahead of her and keep a leadrope on her in case she start's to pull her escape routine.

Well Mareface has learned to slightly turn her head one direction and lower her head. This equals freedom. 

I caught her by her field being an idiot there, brought her back to the barn where we had a discussion about not threatening to rear while being lead. I decided she had way too much energy and threw her rear in round pen and did some join-up work with her and can say she honestly stopped for the first time when I turned my back to her. Big progress!

Focus

So as you know from my last post, the time I spend at the barn is 1) Going to be more limited 2) Needs to be productive. 

For the last two months, I've been more focused on Dakota except for the last few weeks when he was in dire need of a trim and his shoes reset. Now he's all trimmed up and has shiny hooves again and I had to face a major self dilemma. Dakota frustrates me. If I have high expectations for a ride he's a nightmare. If I get on and expect to do nothing but sit on him we have a great ride. Faced with the fact I can easily work with him again without worrying about his hooves, I began questioning why I'm stressing and working myself up over working with him. Yes he's my first horse, I want him to be successful, I want others to see what I see in him but at the same time I know Echo has more potential and is the one I should be focused on.

So next month, Mareface is getting rode by a trainer 1-2x a week. Not a lot, but it well help me be more comfortable 1) riding her 2) start taking lessons on her.

Balancing Act

2 cats. 2 horses. 2 jobs. 12 credit hours this semester. Apartment still needing unpacked from moving.

Well life just got a bit more interesting. Yesterday I started a second part time job. Part time at a grocery store. It's as exciting as it sounds. However my options were a second job or sell a horse and that wasn't an option I wanted to face. Then Today marks the start of a new college semester for me. 

So how am I going to manage my life? Well I figure this is a great chance to improve my time management 'skills' which have barely exist.

My job at Equibase is on a set schedule so that helps. I have Sunday and Mondays off from there. Ill most likely be working these days at the new job. Ill still manage to get to the farm daily, I just may have to become a morning regular instead of evenings. There will be a few days a week that when i get off from Equibase I'll have to work the second job that night. Days I work only one job are days I'll be dedicating studying to and also using these days to do more serious things with the horses.

It's going to be a major challenge for me. If I'm still semi upright and not locked up in a padded cell by mid December, there will be a night of serious margarita or cosmopolitan consumption to be had.

The Great Separation

After dealing with hormonal gelding and mare, two escapes and a few curse words later I finally said enough and split Echo and Dakota to where they can't even see each other in turnout. They're not content just seeing each other like they were in Michigan and both were becoming impossible to handle. Dakota is now out with 4 other geldings in a big field. Echo remains by herself until an opening comes up with another mare. 

Video of Dakota with his new field mates. Puck, the morgan I posted about before is the bay with a muzzle on. Supremo is the other bay, a TB. Finn is the chestnut with no white leg markings and Ned is the chestnut with the white legs - both Ned and Finn are TBs. Basically lots of high strung geldings that will wear each other out. Dakota and Finn love each other. 

Blah?

It's been a weird week. Marred by mostly horse racing news, the highlights just seem bleek. 

• Death of G1 winner Monzante
• Injury & colic of St Nicholas Abbey
• Oxbow injured
• Take Charge Indy injured & retired
• Death of Unbridled's Song
• Corporate Jungle's injury
• Death of my favorite morning radio host.

Dakota & Echo are about the same. Continuing some ground work in the round pen with Echo before I get on her. Trying to work through a few issues before I proceed.

The highlights of the last week:

My friend Josie, who I wrote about here, got her double lung transplant July 27th / 28th after a 10+ hour surgery. Fingers crossed for a successful recovery.

The Rood and Riddle Grand Prix

 

Heat heat go away!

Well it stopped raining. Which I should of known meant time for it to heat up. I'm such a northern sissy when it comes to heat. It gets 80+ and I won't entertain the idea of riding. 85+ I have to force myself to the barn but if there's a breeze I'm alright. 90+ I'm flat out useless and slug my way through cleaning stalls and go home ASAP. How the heck do my California & Florida friends ride in this? 

Heat index is well over 100 I believe for next couple of days. If I want to ride, looks like I'll be planning on saddling up around 9-10pm at this rate. Yay for indoors with decent lighting. 

Positive note. It's been just over 4 weeks since Dakota had his shoes put on. 1) He still has them on *knock on wood* 2) Check out the crazy amount of growth he's had! The top point was at his coronet band when he had the shoes put on in June. The I'm beyond thrilled that this farrier didn't completely screw up the angles of his hooves and had made the shoes last this long with no glue needed (especially with all that rain we had). I may actually have a shot at getting this crazy crazy crazy crack in his hoof to grow out with the summer growth burst in combination of good farrier and winter not around corner to have to pull them off.

For those that don't know... he's had this crack, that started as a sand surface crack in 2006 before we moved to Kentucky the first time. It's grown 1/2 way out before, then winter came and I had to pull them because it was so icy. It then progressed to a deeper crack, going through the white line at one point. Fingers crossed.

Muzzle Musings

Oh Echo... What am I going to do with you?

I love my mare, I really do, but sometimes I just look at her, shake my head and see one disaster of a horse. We got her hind end female issues clear, now I have a clover induced drooling mess of a horse with a messed up muzzle. 

Drool and some of the spotting on her muzzle. Such a glorious sight.

When I got Echo last fall, she arrived with what I assumed to be spots of sunburn from being left outside 24/7. The first week I had her, I applied Corona Ointment daily and it cleared up. No more problems.

Pre Michigan Photo - you can see slightly the muzzle spots.

My thoughts:

• If it was an allergy to grass, clover or a weed wouldn't it be on more of her body?
• If it was Vitiligo would she loose hair or have changes to her hair?
• I've given her mineral blocks in both stall and her field, as well at adding a little extra mineral top dressing to her grain to try and rule out either a copper or iron deficiency. 
• Not summer / sweet itch. It'd be all over her body for sure.

Regardless of whatever it is, it clearly isn't bothering her, just me. I'll update on what vet says whenever I have him take a look at it. Not in a HUGE rush to figure it out, just would like to know.

More delish drool.

Side note - I lunged her this morning before work. She was a mess. Acted like she's never lunged in her life. Time to figure out how to get consistent with her again. 

Blurred Lines

Saturday to now is one giant blur. So I better write this thing 1) before I forget it all 2) so I can remember things in the future.

Saturday C and I rushed after work to get to the barn and get our horses all done so we could head to The Red Mile to see the fancy pant Saddlebred's do their thing. My conclusion? Most entertaining, amusing and disturbing horse show all at once. "Please walk your horse" simply meant just keep doing what you're doing, no need to demonstrate a 4 beat walk gait in a 3 or 5 gaited class (sarcasm). Just simply, wow.

Hackney going around in one of the driving classes.

Sunday I got to the barn after work and briefly debated doing something with one of the horses. I had no idea who or what. I took a brush in Dakota's stall since wash/groom stalls were taken and found all his itchy spots and made him happy by brushing him all over. I decided to get a different brush and like an idiot, left his gate open by a mere 2-3 inches. My brushes were right outside his stall, should of been no problem. Dakota apparently felt a workout coming but he had his own version to demonstrate. He flung the gate open to his stall, bumping me out of the way and took off at a gallop out the end of the barn. Great. First thought, good he didn't go toward the parking lot which last time he did that he galloped toward the road before changing his route. Second thought was grab Echo, she'll be great bait in catching the little sneaky gelding. He didn't even look at Echo of course. I put her in the round pen hoping she'd call to him, nope. I left her there though, and took her lead rope as extra Dakota catching gear. Luckily he ran toward the 'track' at the farm. Which has the outside perimeter fenced in so unless he got out the opening we had blocked with C and myself, he wasn't going to far. He said hi to every mare that is turned out in the 'infield' of the so called track area. Then instead of being a good horse and coming to me who was only 10-15 feet away, he took off at a dead out gallop around the track. I went and got grain, hoping it'd entice him. I come back, D is closer to us than he was when he took off but he's keeping his distance, visiting new horses. Spun around, took off at a gallop back the other direction around the track. 

Now I have to say, while he's trotting, galloping around, I got A LOT of compliments on how cute of a mover he is. Softened the blow of my horse being a jackass a little.

Dakota see's C and I standing across the track, he digs in, puts his head down and speeds up. C starts trying to scare him into stopping, waving things in the air - doesn't work on a horse that's gone through hours and hours of police horse desensitizing work. Finally he skids to a stop, turns and trots a few strides but finally succumbs to the sound of the grain in the bucket. 

Dakota = barely sweating and having a great time. Me = Covered in sweat and exhausted. Echo = pissed off that she didn't get to run with him. I turn them out and go home and call it a night. Dakota wins.

Yesterday I had a full list of things to do. Woke up with zero motivation. Finally C texted me at 11ish to go to one of the stallion open houses going on. I oblige because they have two stallions I would consider sending Echo to. I wanted to see them now, even if I planed on seeing them in November at open house time. Note... I had considered breeding Echo to a TB for a racing prospect, but in last few weeks after more research I'm 99% sure I'll never breed her for that purpose. Nonetheless I want to look at stallions. Gives me something to do. Four of the stallions at Spendthrift:

Into Mischief

Line of David

Temple City

Awesome Patriot

Then headed to Fasig-Tipton for the July Yearling sale. We watched about 50 hips sell. Some exciting ones, some not so exciting ones. It was really hot so we spent most our time sitting in the sales area, not making too much movement so no one thought we were bidding.

A little bumper sticker humor for anyone that follows horse racing. Colleen and I died laughing over this thing. If you don't know, but want to know, click here.

Wrapped up the day by heading toward the mall to do some much needed apartment supply shopping.

Tonight I have to rush after work to get the horses done so I can get back home to meet a maintenance person so no hope of me working horses tonight. Maybe tomorrow? That October Thoroughbred show is creeping closer and closer way faster than I want it to for Echo...

Who Needs a Routine

Moving into the apartment has thrown me completely off in any sort of routine I had while staying on the couch at the farm. Living on south end of Lexington + Barn on north side of Lexington = double the drive time in my day.

Work... I don't know what days of the week I'm even going to be working. I need a set schedule and soon. I don't care (yet) so much about what hours of the day I'll be working, I just need to know if I'm M-F, Tues-Sat or really anything at this point.

Riding / training Echo and Dakota are taking the biggest hit right now. I need an extra 10 hours in my days!

Thankfully this weekend I get to work 9-5 both Saturday and Sunday. Tomorrow / Saturday I'm off to watch the fancy pant ponies at The Junior League Horse Show at The Red Mile. Not a saddlebred fan, should be interesting. Also in much need of a night of margaritas and Mexican food with my lovely friends ASAP. Hopefully that will happen this weekend.

Monday no work so... Fasig Tipton July Yearling Sale... YAY. I love sales. LOVE. I have a pretty lengthy list of the yearlings I want to check out so it should be a great day.

The Move

Move = Done.

I got to Michigan by 10:30 Sunday night after an alright drive. I had to stop and take a few 15 minute power naps but not too big of a deal. 

The Before

Monday morning my Dad got the U-Haul super early - too early for me at least. Then my uncle that was in town from Chicago came and helped us load the truck in record time. It took us about 90 minutes start to finish to get everything in. I'm 100% positive that if my uncle had not helped, we would either 1) still be loading it OR 2) half my stuff would still be in Michigan. My Dad just does not listen to me on stacking and packing. He clearly never played Tetris. So thank you to my wonderful uncle!

The After

Tuesday we packed up the cats and few remaining things around the house and got on the road by 9:30 in the morning. Mid drive my phone starts blowing up from my bank that there were fraud charges on my account. Moral of the story? Don't go to a McDonald's while you're on a road trip, or probably ever because that shit just isn't that good. Anyways, I love my bank and they had already froze my account and reversed all charges for me before they called me then overnighted me a new debit card. Fast forward a few hours and we finally got to Lexington. Went to dinner, and started unloading. Fast forward another hour or so we called it quits for the day.

Then my Dad forgot to latch the back door. I laughed and took a picture before I helped. I know, I'm a good daughter.

Holly Riding in style.

Abu riding in his crate and wearing his thundershirt!

Wednesday morning we finished the few boxes left to be taken inside. I followed my Dad to the barn with the truck and we unloaded the rest of my barn stuff there and he took off back to Michigan and I went home to attempt to unpack and recover.

And Kentucky welcomed me back with a lovely Thunderstorm on Wednesday afternoon.