Unbelievable

I just realized that it's only been a year since Smellie ran his first event after the colic surgery. I missed the one year mark of his surgery. It seems so long ago now.

I remember that day so vividly. Betsy and I went to the farm and Smellie looked fine. He was out in the paddock with Warren. Head down. Grazing away. Within 15 minutes I couldn't keep him on his feet. I don't know why we had the client's trailer hooked up, but we did. I rode in the back with Elliot while Betsy drove. I had to hit him with the dressage whip to keep him up. We got to the vet school which was thankfully only 5 minutes down the road. I could hear Betsy arguing with the intercom about opening the gate. I assume they were asking for a gate pass, but all I heard was Betsy say 'I have a very sick horse in the back. I don't have time for this. Either you open the gate, or I'm ramming it.' Off we rolled. When we got him off the trailer, they did a bunch of tests. They couldn't keep him comfortable even with some pretty serious sedation every 15 minutes. I don't really know what happened, but I was in the trailer's living quarters and I remember Betsy walking in and saying 'I told them to cut him'. I'm glad she was there. I was a total wreck.

He spent four hours on the table. Betsy and I watched the entire time. At that point I had cried as much as I could and it all seemed so surreal anyway. I remember poor Dr. Mochal up to her elbows in Elliot for hours. I remember her looking for something as she was closing him up. We joked at the time that she was worried she might have have lost a tool inside Smellie. Turns out she was, but she didn't. He wouldn't be here without Dr. Cate Mochal and her team. I cannot thank them enough.

After six months of recovering, we did the novice at Poplar Place in June 2012. Smellie was so naughty! He was wound for sound in the dressage and scored a forty something. Worse even, he ran backwards from the show jumps from way out. Like WAY out. We racked up 12 time faults in the show jumping despite not having any jump penalties. When he did get there, he was running away with me and ran past the distances and jumped poorly.

It's a little less than 15 months later and Elliot is running Intermediate successfully. He scores mid 30s to low 40s in the dressage. He's jumping the snot out of the fences and well. He's qualified for the CCI2 at Fairhill in the fall, and he is just so much fun! I cannot believe it.

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Living the Dream, part I

Life with horses is crazy, especially where I am in my horsey career. It's non-stop. There aren't many days off. There are many late nights, early mornings, and just long days. You don't make lots of money, and the money you do make inevitably finds its way back into your horses. You have to LOVE it to want to do it for a living. Actually, I think you have to be borderline nuts to want to do this for a living. Crazy lady. Right here.


For those people born with the bug, all these hardships are totally worth the rush of riding a good horse. It's something I am not really sure I can explain; it's something magic. Stephie Baer describes it as an addiction. Maybe so. We put ourselves through a lot of hell searching for the next high.

And maybe this isn't the life of all professional horse people. I would love to hear that it is not in fact the life of all professional horse people because it would give me hope. It is however the life of many professional horse people I know and spend time with.

My days go a little something like this (things are especially busy since we are in between working students, which means Betsy and I are doing all the stalls, all the riding, all the teaching, plus all the other regular work associated with running a barn like taking horses to the vet, holding horses for the farrier, hauling/unloading hay and grain and shavings, office work, etc.):


Wake up as early as I can manage, which really ends up being not that early. I want to be a morning person, but ever morning when the alarm goes off I decide I will start tomorrow. Usually I hit snooze a few times until my guilt starts to outweigh the sleepiness.

Sometimes I make myself a cup of tea and some breakfast. On a good day I will even make myself a fruit smoothie, but that requires that I have been grocery shopping that week so more often I just head out the door to the farm.

I clean stalls while Betsy brings in and feeds. We have 13 stalls. Some subset of these usually does not have horses in them because we're letting the floors dry, or they needs repacking, etc. This morning, for example, I did 11 stalls. This may not be many, but sure felt like it. At the moment our manure dumpster is beyond completely full. This means you have to dump the wheelbarrow on the ground and then shovel the manure into the dumpster. You essentially shovel all the crap twice (and now you know the secret to my guns).

After stalls are clean, I head to my day job. I work as an architectural drafter for Bill who owns the property where Redbud is located. I spend a lot of time with Bill. Maybe too much time with Bill... I also drink far too many Diet Cokes and am usually far to cranky. I work in the office from 9 (-ish since I'm usually running late) to 3. Then I dash back off to the farm.

Afternoons at the farm are filled with working as many horses as possible, teaching some lessons if Betsy needs to be in two places at once, grooming my horses, cleaning tack, and any other odd jobs I have time for (which is not many). I work at least two horses everyday and often get to as many as six. Some of these are the horses I compete, and some are horses in training with Redbud Farm. Betsy does most of the teaching because I make kids, and honestly some adults, cry and then they don't come back. It's bad for business. I am super anal about grooming my competition horses. I want them to turn heads at the events, and the only way this happens is putting in the elbow grease at home. Cleaning tack and doing extra chores happens less than I would like. In an ideal world, all the bridles would be cleaned, wrapped, and put away; the tack room would be tidy; winter blankets would already be washed and packed up. Sometimes it just not worth the extra time at the end of an already long day so we live with some chaos.


Around 9pm I head home. We eat a lot of pizza. Pizza or Ramen Noodles. I'm so sick of pizza. I'm not so sick of Ramen, but I'm sure it's coming. This kind of diet is probably why I am not skinny as a rail after all the stalls and horses each day...


After dinner, I unwind for a bit before falling into bed between 10-11pm. Then I wake up and start all over again.

On the days I don't go to 'work', I'm often spending 12 hour days at the farm doing all the things I did not get to in the week like dragging the paddocks and arena, setting new jump courses, repairing jumps, clearing brush, mowing, clipping, pulling manes, cleaning the trailer, cleaning the tack room, etc. It's more of a bus man's holiday than a day off.

And sometimes you just run our of steam.

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