One foot in front of the other

It's a miracle - I have taken the time to blog.

My new job and Hampton and life in general has kept me quite busy and exhausted and trying to multi-task to my maximum abilities. 

But it's all good.

This is the kind of adventures I get to go on
for my new job.

Anyway, Hampton is doing much better these days. It seems that little period of unsoundness was a result of a nasty case of sulcus thrush in his left front foot. This falls entirely on me for not keeping on top of it. It was so bad that when I gently stuck a hoofpick in that sulcus crack it started to bleed. Kind of a lot. So clearly he had some necrotic and painful tissue.

So - I have been soaking ALL his sulcus cracks with Tomorrow (dry cow mastitis stuff), because he has contracted heels in all 4 feet really. But the left front I then butt floss some gauze into that crack so it will open up and allow air in there.

The nerdiest of nerds.

Then he got expensive frog pad shoes to help mechanically open up his heels and offer him some cushion. I also left his bell boots off because I was afraid they were trapping crap and moisture. Naturally, Hampton pulled a front shoe on Thanksgiving. Thank fuck he pulled the shoe off the good foot. So I guess the bell boots go back on.

I love horses.

He is back to feeling much better and working great so I will take it.

This brings up a good point. He apparently can feel that foot. This is the foot that was nerved just a year ago. So that development is quite disappointing. So I am not sure how much longer Hampton will remain serviceably sound. I don't think I would do the neurectomy again since he seems to regenerate nerves at a bizarrely rapid pace.

However, at the moment he is going great and I will just enjoy that while I can and will cross other bridges when we come to them. Not sure what else there is to do. I mean technically none of us know how long our horses will be sound so .... *shrug*

You know I have adventures planned as well. Annnnnd got suckered into fostering another cat. This cute guy still has his trouble puffs so he has to live in my spare bathroom. It makes me feel terrible but I guess it's better than a cold cage or death. I named him Sly. lol

Porkchop the Schoolmaster

Hurricane deployment number 1 in the books!

Probably the cutest place I saw the entire 11 days. 
Cute park in Sebring, FL.
Not pictures, 3 cop cards and some drug lords.

I survived, and will never move to Florida. Moving on.

I cannot thank the plethora of people who took care of my boys while I was away. I believe this was the longest I have ever been away from Hampton. He of course seemed unbothered.

Hampton got to play Schoolmaster while I was gone and he was SUCH a good boy. 

He was a lesson horse for a really fabulous teenager. She was very deserving of the ride
and I was more than happy to offer it.

My barn friends traded some rides on him and I am so thankful they kept his muscles moving. The more movement the better for Hamp. Even though he lives outside 24/7, he still sometimes gets stiff when he has more than 2 days off in a row. #oldman

And a very deserving teenager took a lesson on him. It made my heart burst when I got video of her doing tempis with him! I'm not sure she has done them before! And there goes Hampton just the perfect schoolmaster. Somehow this 2 year old random gelding I bought in 2009 is now giving FEI level lessons to a young rider. I'm not sure how this all happened. *sniffle*

Unfortunately, Hampton is back to suffering lameness on his left front. I'm not sure if his neurectomy is no longer effective, or an abscess? Or what? It's very disheartening. It's almost a year to the day since his nerve surgery. Not going to go to dark places just yet as I have not even consulted a vet yet about it, and the girls DID find a stick wedged in his frog and some seepage of goop so will hold off on being depressed until we can figure out what exactly is going on. Horses, man.

Anyway I am very happy to be home and catching up on blogs, sleep, Buckley demands, eating actual meals, laundry and usual orders of business. Whew.

90 degree turn: Part 2

Somehow, in a series of events, networking, good luck, good friends, persistent friends, and successful interviews I was hired on as a property adjuster in August 2022. Changing careers at 42 took some rather large balls, but nothing changes if nothing changes.

How much do I know about insurance? Minimal.

How much do I know about adjusting? Absolutely nothing.

But this company was willing to take a chance on this jaded journalist, and train me.

Blog gets old media of Hamp today.
I am in desperate need of updated photos.

This job means a flexible schedule, holidays and weekends off *cough* SHOWS, work from home and work out in the field and endless learning opportunities. Plus there is quite a bit of room for advancement just within the company, not to mention the field of insurance. 

My mother was worried that "people will hate me" since insurance adjusters are often met with resentment from clients, and sometimes you are meeting people at the worst times in their lives. I had to remind her that I was certainly NOT liked as a journalist either. Refer back to 2016 and on thank you. And so far I have only run into kind and professional people on site. Plus, I get to do cool things like climb on roofs.

This my hooman.

As of Wednesday, I now have my KY adjuster license!

And one month into the job I am already getting deployed to Florida for hurricane claims. It will probably be about 10 days. Talk about being thrown to the wolves. It should teach me a lot though. Bring it on.

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!