90 degree turn: Part 1

I DID NOT DO THIS. lol

In a wild turn of events, I quit my job in August.

I had been designing, photo editing, copy editing, writing and basically nose-deep in newspapers for almost 20 years. It was my first job out of college and print journalism was all I knew.

I designed pages, sorted through photos, read stories and worked with other journalists (sometimes until 2 am) to produce pages featuring major historic events including

• 5 presidential elections
• Hurricane Katrina
• Virginia Tech shooting
• Stock market crash/housing market crisis of 2008
• Osama Bin Laden killed
• Hurricane Sandy
• Death of Pope John Paul
• Death of Ronald Reagan
• Sandy Hook shooting
• Boston Marathon Bombing
• Sam Sex Marriage legalized (one of my favorite nights as a journalist)
• Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to SCOTUS
• The COVID-19 pandemic
• Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington DC
• Couple of impeachments of Trump
• Overturn of Roe v. Wade
• Covid -19 vaccines
• Haiti earthquake
• Two Triple Crown winners
• Multiple Olympics
• Jerry Sandusky/Penn State
• Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics

When I was furloughed in 2009, I bought this thing.

... plus hundreds of local events, deaths, murders, you name it for newspapers including Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Louisville Courier Journal, Lansing State Journal, Muncie Star Press, Lafayette Journal & Courier and more.

It was not an insignificant career.

It was a career where I saw both the best and the worst of humanity.

A career where the president of the united states challenged the free press in ways it had not been challenged. I saw journalism change dramatically with the internet and social media. People no longer got their news and facts from trained, unbiased journalists. Instead they got it from Facebook or some website and then blamed the "liberal media" if they saw news they didn't agree with. I heard things like that even from my own family. 

I didn't do this either lol. FFS

I scarified a lot for a career I enjoyed. I worked nights and weekends for years. Sometimes we would not put the paper to bed until 2 am. I never made much money, but I made things work. I was good at my job.

But layoffs and furloughs started to wear on everyone. I barely worked part time the summer of 2020 because of furloughs thanks to Covid. I knew something had to change. 

So I started to sort of poke around for other jobs and careers I could possibly get into.

Nothing really went very far. Until the summer of 2022.

Tip toeing back onto the ship

Hamp loves the stormy, cool fall weather.

We were so very lucky to have one of my all time favorite clinicians, LS, in town recently.

Hamp has been back in full work, and while he does occasionally still have some drainage from his sinus he seems to be back to normal and the hole where his tooth was extracted is fully healed. I owe Rood and Riddle a damn kidney but I suppose life could be worse. lol

Anyway, our lesson with LS was wonderful and she was very encouraging about our Grand Prix journey. Basically saying I jumped ship based upon one bad show and what the hell is wrong with me. hahaha. "Do the Grand Prix" she said. And then she told me several stories regarding her own GP disasters, and disasters from other international trainers that were FAR worse than my little incident. If you aren't having disasters in the show ring, you aren't riding and showing enough. And probably not training your own horses. And for the horses and riders you think are perfect, even in the Olympics, they most assuredly are not.

I will need to drink excessively build up some more nerve, but maybe GP is back on the table.

Anyway, I took notes and gathered tidbits from my lesson and several others that I watched. 

• Passage in haunches in
• Put passage "over the trot"
• Push him into passage, no hands!
• Scrunch boobs to belt in passage
• Put him on the bit, let go. Repeat until you die
• Not so much bend in GP zig zag (I was overbending his neck)
• Bring lower legs back
• Hold a grapefruit behind your knee
• H/J riders are rewarded for being immobile and doing as little as possible. Dressage is about influencing the horse. It is a sport, you will work very hard and that's not a bad thing. 
• Post with great clarity
• Medium across diagonal. Walk at X. Back to medium trot

And I WISH I had some media because Hamp worked so great. #fail

You know what else is failing? This box.

I hope to spend a few days to a week at her farm in VA (maybe 2023?) for a boot camp. I think that would really help confirm the tweaks she makes. 

The winter will be about building strength, self carriage and engagement. He needs to crawl out of his skin waiting on my aids. And we need to add a lot more walking for fitness. Hampton is at the point where he doesn't need to school All The Things all the time. He needs to be fit so that I can preserve his soundness. 

Until next time!

Kraken released

 Hampton had his lavage tube pulled Tuesday and was released back into the wild!

I'm not sure there was a happier horse on the planet that morning. haha! 

Jokes on him because it's back to work this week.

Head like a hole

 Last Thursday I dropped Hampton off at Rood and Riddle hospital in Lexington.

Within the hour, the vet had examined him, took X-rays and determined it was indeed the cracked molar causing his sinus infection. We were able to avoid a CT scan thankfully! I am working on getting that X-ray and will share it of course hahaha. Dr. Brad Tanner was Hampton's doctor and the level of care is just phenomenal. 

His suite at the hospital! He was rather annoyed there was nothing to crib on lol

As soon as that was confirmed, Hampton had the green light to get his tooth extracted and sinus trephination. The tooth did come out in pieces, but overall it went ok. And his sinus procedure also went just fine. He now has a lavage system in place. There was a good amount of pus they flushed out the first time. Poor guy. 

I went down Friday morning and walked him for a bit. Actually, he ended up
walking me. Gave zero shits about the tube in his face.

At Rood and Riddle

And he did so well he was discharged on Saturday! Our regular vet will lavage him today (Monday) and Tuesday one more time before he gets this fine accessory removed. And then he can go back outside AND go right back to work. He will still have some staples in his head but a flymask should keep that protected.

Back home!

Hamp handled this all like a champ. And while QUITE expensive, this really ended up being pretty easy on the horse. I am sure his face is sore, but he is acting quite chipper with a good appetite. I have been hand walking him and he has been dragging my ass around. I ended up putting a chain over his nose so I am not flying a large kite.

He will be on Doxycycline for about a week, and Gastroguard but he is off bute! And thankfully our barn grain is mostly beet pulp so it soaks into a nice mash really easily. And I have to rinse out his mouth once a day as well. That is probably the worst part of all of this because he flings water everywhere and I end up soaked. Punk.

Get me the F outta this place lady.

Stuffing his face back at home.

So it's looking like a very swift recovery. Now I just need jingles for ME who has to survive handwalking this thing a couple more days!

Mirrors.

 You know how people say that horses and riders mirror each other?

This has always been true about Hampton and myself, but this week we took it a little too far.

First, Hampton shows up with a snotty nose. Just one nostril. No other symptoms.

It smells like something DIED in there, too.

It's a cracked molar and he has a secondary sinus infection. He will be making another trip to Rood n Riddle this week to have that extracted and likely a sinus trephination. Yep, that's when they drill a hole in their head to let crap drain out.

Recovery will hopefully be easy and swift. Although, this likely ends our show season unless I find something to hit up in the fall/early winter. 

Hopefully will be back in the ring in no time.
(From the I-1 in June)

Then, I was eating pizza and started chewing on something really crunchy. I cracked a crown, and have to have that replaced. Plus a filling. Both molars lol.

Life is getting a little crazy and I'll have an update soon but except for our tooth issues it's so far all awesome news.

Off to the dentists we go.

Myth busters Monday: Feeding dry beet pulp

A young Hampton snoozing in his food

 If I feed dry beet pulp to my horse will his stomach explode?

Myth. 

Beet pulp is sold in either dried shreds or pellets and yes, when you add water to it it does expand. But it expands too slowly to worry about. Given a horse's stomach capacity and how quickly it empties into the small intestine (and beyond) when it becomes full, it's an extremely unlikely thing to happen.

There is a large university study which further dispelled the stomach-exploding myth in a study where horses ingested up to 45 percent of their total diet from dry beet pulp. No adverse effects were noted. No colic, choke or change in manure moisture.

(Two sources have mentioned this study and I cannot find it online anywhere...grrr)

Throwback to our jumping days!

Beet pulp seems to also suffer from rumors that feeding it dry can cause choke. It's more likely that a choke would be caused by bolting feed, or some abnormality with the horse. Not so much beet pulp itself. Although, sometimes the pellet forms DO come in rather large, hard chunks so personally I wouldn't try my luck there.

Nonetheless, many feed beet pulp soaked and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It makes it easier to chew, adds some hydration, you can sneak supplements in it and it can slow down a horse who wants to hoover his feed.

Just use caution not to soak it for too long (more than 24 hours probably) because it will ferment.

Hampton's grain contains quite a bit of beet pulp and it's such a great forage to feed. And I don't soak it. Except when I add beer. haha.

More on Beet Pulp from The Horse.

A porkchop and steak

 We took a rode trip last week to a little farm about an hour away. The gal who runs it is a super horsewoman and let a group of us come and work cows for a couple of hours.

It was the perfect activity for a 90+ degree day because we did nothing but walking, so it wasn't physically hard on anyone but for sure mentally engaging.

I thought that maybe Hampton would be scared of the cows, but he was not. At all.

At first he was curious.

Horses with previous experience started first.

Then we started just slowly walking the cows around the arena. Confident horses led first, while others could follow and gain confidence.

It took maybe 30 seconds before Hampton realized "Oh, we chase these things???"

And then he turned into GODZILLA.

I mean ears pinned, neck-snaking, steak-eating MARINE on a mission to kill.

He absolutely loved the game, and when I asked him to stop and stand (and let others take a turn FFS Hampton) he stood politely and watched. Never got wound up. It was like he was a cow horse in a previous life. We did a little modified team penning too!

Highly recommend doing a little cow clinic like this. The two biggest rules was always be facing the cows, and the slower you go the better. It was such a blast and a great break from dressage. Hamp and I did a buffalo clinic about 10 years ago and I guess he must have remembered. haha.

Will for sure be doing this again!