Frozen, thawed, spent.

 

Winter sunrise on the farm

Welp.

I was going to say I wish I had more exciting blog content after slacking for so long, but quickly rethought that statement after the events of this week. I am in fact more than happy to have NO news regarding Hampton. He is happy, and in work and really improving his fitness thanks to swimming.

During his first swim he did 5 laps and now he is up to banging out 12 laps and recovering almost immediately. He is such a good boy and just goes along with it. I can't imagine what horses must think being asked to swim around a pool. 

He looks ... feral. He needs body clipped again badly. He has chin hairs. His mane needs trimmed. He is muddy half the time. His forelock and bridle path are embarassing.

Was 0 degrees here I believe.
Hampton totally unbothered.

But underneath that hair and dirt is a fit dressage horse. He is starting to feel like maybe he would like his hocks done, but that is not unexpected and completely normal. Other than that he is feeling really good. *knocks on wood*

Our Aiken plans are still on, but are undergoing some re-shuffling this year. I think there was 8 of us in the original group and now this year it's down to .... two. Hampton and Royale. The dressage horses. Good grief. 

We all survived The Great Freeze Of Eternity here in the midwest, however my job as an insurance adjuster is now incredibly busy and my mere existence is exhausting. Every pipe in the Greater Kentucky Area And Beyond ruptured and spewed all over the place. I have worked for almost 3 weeks straight with no days off. Plus barn chores, and riding Hampton on top of that. My condo is a disaster area as that fell to the bottom of all priorities. 

Shirt I wore to my family Christmas. heh heh

Buckley of course continues his reign and would never let me forget to feed him.

There is light at the end of this tunnel I think and I am hoping to start planning some lessons and shows shortly. Keep on keepin' on!

I'm going to need those TPS reports Buckley.

An aquatic Porkchop

Hampton swimming. Unsure if he likes this new activity.

In an effort to increase Hampton's fitness over the winter, I jumped on the chance to tag along to a little place called Bluegrass Aquatic Rehabilitation just south of town. 

It's not fancy, but the people were nice and knew what they were doing. Because of their excellent horsemanship, there were no problems and no theatrics getting first-time swimmer Porkchop into the pool. At first they took him around for just one lap to give him the idea of the activity. Then they took him back in for another 5 laps.

Pool overview

Hamp did great, although his eyes were bugging out of his head and I kept getting some major side-eye. It was also interesting noting the difference in how the horses would breathe while swimming. Hampton almost seemed to hold his breath at times, while his barn mate took a very rhythmic 13 breaths per lap. 

After the horses swim, they spend about 30-40 on the hot walker to dry off and keep their muscles moving. It's really a great workout and low-impact on Hampton's feet. He had never been swimming before (although has done the aquatread) so I wasn't sure if he would 1) cannonball in 2) drown or 3) run someone over.

Definitely adding this to our list of winter fitness activities! 

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!