Juggling

As you can no doubtedly tell from my recent lack of posts, I am a very, VERY busy girl this week. There is SO much to do at the new barn and not enough hours in the day, and I am working my BUTT off trying to get all my projects under control AND do all my daily tasks AND stand in for a lot of things that the guys can't do when we are short-staffed. But it's impossible to do my job when I have to do someone else's job as well, so I certainly hope that we can get that situation remedied soon. As it stands, I need SO badly to go to the store and get supplies for the farm that I might just be doing that at 6am tomorrow, because I need to make sure the guys know what's on tap for tomorrow since I didn't write it down on the white board tonight (I quite honestly just forgot... didn't leave the farm until almost 8). But despite all the CRAZINESS and not knowing anything but trying to do everything all at once, I love it. Once everything settles down and I actually complete the 29,000 projects she wants me to work on, I'll be able to really settle into a rhythm and take things as they come instead of struggling to juggle them all at once. It's insane but it's great. It's also very exhausting and takes up pretty much my entire life at the moment, which I will need to figure out how to balance. My room is littered with boxed and clothes, all things that need to be unpacked and put away... but I'm just too tired at the end of the day to do it.

And the extra horrible part of it all is that Gogo is getting less than her usual amount of daily attention. I've been so busy these past few days that she didn't get groomed or longlined from Monday through Wednesday, just walked. She hadn't even gotten to handgraze at all because it's been either pouring or completely dark out by the time I can actually do it. We also have some seriously slacker staff on some counts so her stall hasn't been done until like 11am these past few days, which REALLY annoys me, so much so that I've just been doing it myself. Unfortunately for me, she's stuck in the older barn in the smallest stall, which is only about 10x10. It does have the ComfortStall system, but I'd still like to get her somewhere bigger. We are about to be totally full up though, so I dunno how that's going to work. It's a little bit crazy and there is much to get acclimated to.

She is, however, getting to know and love the treadmill, and so am I. That thing is AWESOME! It has all sort of different speeds and heights that it can go to, and you can set it for different programs with varying levels of speed and angle for a real workout. Gogo, however, is just getting the Level 1 set, a totally flat and steady walk for 25 minutes at a time. The treadmill is ideal therapy - it's in a totally straight line (no drunken sailor weaving or turns or hills), it's a hard surface (good for stimulating tendon regeneration), and it's covered so it can be used rain or shine. Gogo was, as usual, totally the proverbial cool cucumber when I put her on it, although it took her a few minutes to really get it - every time I told her good girl, she'd stop, which meant she'd go backwards and hit the butt bar! It only took a few minutes to really understand, and the next day she was totally fine.



More pictures of Gogo on the treadmill coming soon.

Today I had to run allllllll the way to Waterbury to get grain from the sole Buckeye dealer in the state of Connecticut, and I ended up back at the barn quite late. Gogo is now scheduled to go on the treadmill at 11am every day, and hopefully if I ever start to take a lunch break (still haven't taken one all week), I will be able to long line her then. She got a nice grooming and a long lining session today when I got back, which was great and made her a very happy kid. There were several sets of trot poles set up around the ring, and we walked over those a good number of times, which is very useful for losening up those tight hips and back. I never ended up putting her on the Robaxin because her back soreness went away rather quickly (I think it HAD to be related to that vaccine reaction), and she's been off Surpass for nearly 2 weeks now - I hope to NOT put her back on. I haven't iced her hinds this week because quite frankly, they've been tighter than they've been since the injury, and cooler too. They're still not normal and they're still not as cool as I'd like, but give the circumstance I'm impressed.

And the best part.... ONE WEEK til I can get back on her and walk again!!!!!!


Now hopefully tomorrow, after I get Sophie bodyclipped, Pilgrim's mane pulled, all the needed barn supplies from the store, the new hay schedule set in place with the non-English-speaking workers on board, the maintenace guy called about the broken stall front, the folders for the new horses set up, two stalls prepped for two new incoming boarders arriving tomorrow morning, the blanket room measured for new racks, the board and billing book updated, the grains premade, and the 25,000 other things I'm forgetting here all done, then I will be able to maybe unpack some of my stuff from the trailer and figure out where to send my winter blankets to for cleaning. I also made friends with our exceedingly pro-barefoot farrier... more on that later. As for now..... SLEEEEEEP.

Two Fatties Back to Work

As of Thursday, Gogo's rehab schedule has changed again, and now included one 15 minute handwalk in the AM (up from 10 mins), 10 minutes of handgrazing AM, and 15 minutes of long lining in the afternoon. She is far out enough from the injury to start toying with variations on her daily handwalks. She still needs flat ground, pavement, and straight lines, but she also is craving mental stimuation. I think she's acclimated to the whole idea of stall rest pretty well, but that didn't stop her the other day from doing some serious aerials during her afternoon handwalk. She's very well behaved about her obnoxiousness though - she might be shooting forward or bouncing off the ground with all four feet, but let me tell you something, she NEVER puts tension on the lead! Nevertheless, the last thing I want her to do is to start pinging around like that, so once she hit the 15 min 2x daily mark, I decided it was high time to start long lining/ground driving again. It was cute - when I pulled out the surcingle and the rest of the tack, her eyes about popped out of her head and her ears looked as though if she put them any more forward they'd snap right off.



(It's kind of cute actually... my whole little family minus kitten and parrot are in this picture. Dog, truck, mare, me!)
Boy those are two serious fatties right there. I myself seem to have put on 10 pounds over the course of the past 11 months and I am NOT happy about it. Despite the fact that I am half starved, the boarders are nonstop bringing Dunkin, brie, bagels, and more crap food to the barn, so that's what I've been eating, and it's really showing by now. Nobody is going to stop and look at me and call me morbidly obese, but I know the difference in myself, and that's what bothers me. Once the move is complete, I fully intend on shedding that extra grossness by being able to actually afford all sort of delicious fruits and veggies, and exercise. And as for Gogo, well, that's a bit trickier. I've cut her already meager grain ration to 1.5lbs daily spread out over 3 feedings (and remember, she's not actually getting grain at all, she's getting a ration balancer - I can't actually cut it any lower than it already is for fear that she wouldn't be getting all her daily needed vits/mins in), and she's munching on about 8 flakes of really crappy quality grass hay. I know next to nothing about our hay - no idea where it comes from, what's in it, etc - and it changes every time the supplier brings it, but there is one consistant thing about it: It's always crappy. Normally I'd be very unhappy about this, but given the circumstance, it's actually a good thing. We've been keeping Gogo happy by essentially keeping a constant flow of hay in front of her, and by having less than beautiful hay, it takes her much longer to chew on (she'd gobble it if it was nicer, this way she takes a long time to pick around her favorite parts first... she still hoovers it all, it just takes a lot longer!), and it doesn't fatten her up like a nice quality grass hay would do. Still, all that extra fiber in the form of stemminess is showing up in her increasingly pendulous belly - her colon is stuffed full! Her topline is decreasing too, but not in the way I expected. I assumed it would just melt off of her, but it's only sort of diminished to the way it looked last winter. I worked VERY hard to build a nice topline on her (the Ewe-Necked Wonder remember) so I'm very, very sad to see it go.

Wednesday, Gogo was bouncing around like a porpoise on the end of her lead, like I was saying, so I figured that with the change of schedule on Thursday, it was high time to start long lining again and give her something to do. A disclaimer for the picture: this is NOT where you normally stand while long lining. It can be very dangerous to stand this close, and it's generally much safer to stand about 6-8 feet behind the horse and off to the side a bit. We're not exactly long lining per say though... we're just ground driving. I have tried attaching the long lines at varying points on her surcingle and back to the bit, but given her tendancy to curl under and lose steering when she feels confined, I'm not willing to play with that right now during rehab, so I just run them from the bit through the side rings on her surcingle and back to me. At this point in our lives, Gogo's long lining experience includes steering and the commends walk on, trot on, whoa, back up.... yeah, that's about it. That to me only qualifies as ground driving. Still, it's something, and we're doing nothing more on the ground than just walking for the purpose of therapy (and tossing in a few halts and the occasional back up just to keep it fresh), so it serves its purpose. I see videos like this and go wow, one day perhaps, but that day is not today. (Also, those of you who know me know that I just can't stand Friesians... but I admit that what was done on the long lines with that one is pretty interesting). I don't have a clue where you would even begin to teach piaffe/passage on the long lines. Then again, I don't have a clue how you would really teach piaffe/passage at all, beyond the vague theory I've read about in books. Someday, Gogo... but not today.

Today, you and I are just going to go for a walk.





And admire the barn scenery while we're at it.








I officially move in to my new apartment on Sunday. And work begins Monday. I'm starting to get nervous at this point. Hang on to a stranger's galloping horse in the middle of the woods? No problem. Start a new job? Oh god help me. Bravery only gets you so far sometimes.