Today was a great day at the barn. Spartan was SO cute, I wanted to melt into a puddle and baby-talk with him for endless hours. The last few days I've been back from India, he's been rather distant with me--you now, when your horse passively accepts your presence and goes about his day as you go about yours, not truly ever acknowledging each other. Poor guy probably thought I abandoned him forever past the 6 week mark, hah. But anyways, he was back to his sweeeeeet, needy self today and I'm just in a happy mood :) I had had him be turntout (super good syntax) during the day today while I was at work, since he's currently in stall-limbo while I figure out a pasture to put him in at my barn, BUT I'm 95% sure the feeders forgot to feed him dinner out there. When I pulled up in the parkinglot across from his turnout, he was calling and calling to me in a frantic manner that I'm sure translated to feeeeeeed me, mom, feeeeeeed me! There was no residual hay in the turnout and judging by the way he stuffed his face when I brought him his pm grain, I'm sure he wasn't fed. Ugh. And the feeders were off work by then so I had no hay to give him. I felt like such a bad mom.

Have.not.been.fed.in.days. Pleasehelp.

I'm pleased to say Spartan's overall demeanor looked great today, though, and I know it's only been a few days but his condition is already improving drastically now that I'm home and meticulously tending to him. His ulcer meds arrived today too (happydance) so he got his first dose tonight for his tummy!

To celebrate the beginning of a good barn-day, me and Spartan went on a little trail-ride for his 10min walk rather than just tracing circles in the indoor. He was fabulous for his first outing in ages. He seemed super surprised that we were riding out and he was very attentive towards everything, but he never put a foot wrong, the sweet sugarpie. He is kindof annoying in that he's not really naturally soft in the mouth, and so steering was rendered rather nonexistent during our escapade, but I know that is something that gets 100x better once he's in work and we're both working on improving communication together.

Weeeeee!

I was a bad owner again, too, and did 20seconds of trot in the indoor to see if he felt lame, shhhhhh! Everyone said he looked sound, but I don't know. His lameness was always a subtle thing in the first place (not sure 20 second trot would give it away), and when I lunged him super briefly today after my ride (30 seconds each way) he still seemed ever so slightly wonky. However. It could honestly be from him being too weak to trot in a 25 meter circle properly. Very likely, actually. Let's just go with that. Haha. I just don't want to get my hopes up guys. If I expect him to be lame, the worst that can happen is him, uhh, being lame! No biggie, no shocker there!

But really, I absolutely love this horse. I've said it before and I'll say it again--he'll have a home with me no what the ultimate prognosis. He can be my glorified dog/gorgeous pasture ornament/flashy lawnmower til his whiskers are grey, because he's one special kid. :)

I do NOT want to face this direction for some reason, and you should most definitely not be attempting to take a one-handed pic right now with your new Iphone, mom.

The problem with boarding...

Today was pretty...bleh. Vacation time is truly over in that I am once again roused in the morning by early calls about Spartan. This one was not too bad, thankfully, but it does put me in a bind with my boarding situation.

My horse is difficult to pasture with other ponies because he's, hem, special, and has a history of unforeseeable suicide-attempts on top of his already busy schedule of being lame. Here is a list of things I have to try to avoid when figuring out a place for him to live at our barn:

Pasture should
-have no mares (unless there is also a bossy--but not too bossy--gelding)
-not be fed alfalfa (super great when you live in California, but we're trying to phase out things that may trigger his spastic, suicidal state of mind)
-have no hotwire (because he just walks through it & takes a tour of the property :( )
-have no overly bossy gelding (because he gets ulcers and colics)
-have no playful young horses (because he will die)
-Fences that won't break when he occasionally  decides to run through them? LOL.

The list goes on, but I'm getting depressed--you get the gist. Basically, our barn is FULL right now and my already difficult-to-place horse's housing options are even more limited. He was temporarily in a retirement pasture when I left to India because I'd been planning on retiring him, due in large part to the management nightmare he posed. He was just getting the shit beat out of him there, though, and between the stress/ulcers and crappy retirement hay, he lost a TON of weight. He doesn't look like my horse anymore. :( I am NOT putting him back out there again, no matter what anyone says.

I was scoping out the pastures today and I found 3 potential spots to talk to my BO about--not sure if people have already reserved them but we'll see. Unfortunately each breaks a rule on my no-no list and, thus, tempts fate, but alas, such is life. One contains a borderline homocidal gelding (ugh, no!), one at least one mare, and the other a young horse (plus may feed a bit of alfalfa). We are treading a fine line here, guys. For now, I've thrown Spartan in a stall, but we'll see where this goes...

On the riding/re-conditioning vein--another slightly depressing experience. Spartan had more energy today, at least, and was also covered in dried sweat when I went to get him, in a resurgence of his shenanigans of old. But when I turned him out in the round pen, him moving out more also showed me some pretty consistent (but only slight) shortness in his left hind, the dreaded limb with the (possible) fetlock fracture we treated and bone spur in the pastern. This makes me sad, because at this point I'm wondering if he's always going to be only serviceably sound, which would pretty much sound the death knells of my dream to ride with Will Coleman and Kim Severson in Charlottesville. Also, my vet is casually telling me to inject/Pentosan/whatever if he keeps like this once I get him back into regular work, but I have severe doubts about taking that course of action with a FOUR-YEAR-OLD. Imagine what he'd be like at 20 :( But okay, enough, one day at a time from here! Right now we will focus on fitness and help him carry his hot-mess self. I sneaked a little stretch of trot to see if he felt lame at that gait undersaddle, but he seemed fine thankgawwwwd! :) On to tm!

He's a total ham.

Last day before India!

So yesterday was my first ride on Spartan in, what, a year? And he was...lazy. Like bizarrely and perplexingly lazy. I've just gotten so accustomed to him being a racing and rearing FREAK that this change is difficult to process, and I'm almost sure a lot of it stems from the return of his dreaded ulcers. This is frustrating, since I just came back from a 1 and a half month vacation in India, and before I had left I had just finished treating the ulcers he had accrued from his time in stall rest. He was in gleaming, dappled health on my last day, like you can sortof see in the picture above. But after dealing with some changes in his schedule while I was gone, including annihilating his tendon on a halter and colicking convincingly enough to warrant an emergency vet call, his ulcers are back with a vengeance and he, consequently, looks like absolute shit. Horribly dull coat, huge weight loss, declined appetite, the works. Back to square one--ugh. So I ordered some Prerace omeprazole since they were having a sale (yay!) and hopefully he'll be back to his goofy self soon! Without the never-ending injuries though, please! Everyone at the barn already thinks he's crazytown. Sigh.

Here is a pic of the aftermath of the halter situation. Gross right?

Anyways, so our ride was pretty nice. We rode in  the outdoor (because I have no sense of self-preservation) for a 10min walk. He could see his pasture buddies from there so he pranced a bit initially, but soon his laziness and utter lack of fitness won out and he ambled along amicably. Barn friend, A, commented that he looked very happy to be out and about again :)

The plan is to take it very slow: from incremental tack-walking to trotting and finally cantering. I let  him be loosey gooesy this time since it was our first ride ever, but next time we will focus on straightness and bend and some halt transitions. Here is to hoping he stays sound!

On the law school front, technically I'm supposed to be looking for a roommate, which, in practice, has yet to be really carried out. I think it's just best to wait until Accepted Students Week is through this weekend and people have a chance to officially settle on Virginia before I really gun for finding a roommate. Right now I'm just not seeing enough students looking yet--what's a girl to do? 1L class sizes are only around 350 people, so the pool is kindof narrow in the house-hunt, but oh well. I'm convinced things will work themselves out eventually! I'm sad to announce, however, that USN Law School Rankings for the year came out a few days ago......and it appears that Penn Law finally managed to best Virginia and eeked up in #7, putting Virginia at #8. I will be honest--I am upset. I was enjoying Virginia's 3-way-tie for #7 all last year and was hoping it would keep ascending up the ranks, but, alas, it was not meant to be. At least we broke away from Berkeley and left them at #9! It's the small things :)

From today: so lazy but so cute!