Welp, that happened

Dragon turned 2 last week, and I thought to myself, "Oh, yay!  Time to break out the dumb party hat!"

And you know, for a 2 year old, she was very well-behaved.

Until she kind of lost patience and spooked at something, during which she stomped the shit out of my foot.

This was like 2 hours later.

Nothing's numb, everything bends, but FUCKING OUCH.

I can't even be mad, because it was legitimately a baby moment - she spooked, threw her feet out to the side when she went to run, and just... stomped me.  Now, her being a bit of a shit after that, when I was taking her back to the pasture and couldn't walk straight?  Yeah, that I was annoyed about.

At least Cessa was being cuddly!

Little Mr. Bishop is off at baby boot camp - or as our trainer dubbed it on the invoice, "Kindergarten for Giants."  So far, he has learned about tying and that when he's being led, he actually has to, y'know, walk forwards instead of stalling out and having a human push him backwards to get where we want to go. lol

Surfacing

So, uh.  I'm still here?  lol

It's been an interesting couple of months.  I kind of dived head-first into pedigree analysis, to a level that... erm.  Well.  I am an adult and I know when I'm hyperfocusing because I'm stressed out and dealing with it by doing random shit.

And about the time I got done with that, we had a strangles outbreak at the farm.  That's finally cleared up now, but it's taken... god, six weeks?  Two months?  There's a whole wacky chain of how it got on the farm in the first place and how it kept coming back up that involves the neighbors of our vet, breeding season, and two sneaky-ass cases of bastard strangles, so it feels like it was forever to even figure out what the fuck was going on.  I can't say everyone's fine, because the BOs lost a horse, but Cessa and Bishop are fine despite contracting it and Dragon either never got it or had such a mild case that nobody noticed.

But y'all.  Why did no one warn me how fucking gross strangles is?  Seriously.  Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry did not prepare me for this aspect of horse ownership.

I'm going to do some sort of post about some of the stuff I found in various pedigrees, but for tonight... Here, have a baby pony video:

And a yearling picture:

Dragon, why are you as tall as your dam? You're 18 months old and ribby because you just grew again!  Stop it!

And a fed-up mareface photo with her lovely strangles bowl cut:

She is so done with humans poking at her. So done.

Still hanging in there

Things continue to be pretty quiet here; between the virus and the wacky weather (ah, yes, fall in Texas, where Mother Nature is either drunk or on a roller coaster), I get out every other week or so to check on the beasties.

Cessa has put weight back on in the pasture; literally everyone in the pasture is fat right now, but the vet thinks it's likely she's got a mild metabolic issue going on.  So spring will be dry lot time, much as I'm sure she's going to love that...

But sometimes she's the cuddliest

Dispatches from trainer-land say that Dragon's doing just fine in baby boot camp, and has learned such exciting things as leading, standing tied, standing tied at the trailer, hanging out in the trailer, etc.

Yesterday was baby's first face wound. Also baby's first fly mask. She is clearly enthusiastic. (I cannot stop giggling at the look on her face...)

Trainer also says that my giant-ass baby is continuing to get taller.  Like... at 8 months old, I have photo proof that she's as tall as a QH/Cream Draft cross.  She is doing a pretty good job of filling a stock trailer, too.

Why are you so big already? Slow down!

So... uh.  Anybody know where to find a good four-step mounting block?  Or... I dunno... ladders suitable for mounting from?

Making it official

I finally picked a name!

Her official registered name will be Freya's Needle.

Which... I know it sounds like it has nothing to do with Dragon, but there was a long and winding mental road to get there. lol The initial suggestion from the BOs was "Dungeons and Dragonflies," and while that didn't quite work for me, I kind of ran with the dragonfly part.  (I have all kinds of suggestions related to dragonflies, if anyone needs any!)

But nothing was really sticking.  In desperation, I started googling things like "nicknames for dragonflies" and "gods associated with dragonflies."  Which is how I found two things:

• The Norse goddess Freya is sometimes associated with dragonflies. She is also a goddess associated with war, along with fertility, beauty, and witchcraft.
• Some areas of the UK refer to dragonflies as "the devil's darning needles."

Her sire is Auraxium War.  Her dam is Oubliette d'Acier - depending on translation, "steel dungeon" or "forgetfulness of steel" or "strength through forgetfulness."

And needles are steel, at least modern ones.

I was sitting there after reading that stuff and just kind of hit on "Freya's Needle" as an idea, and it just... didn't go away.  So we're keeping it, and we're keeping Dragon as a barn name.

She is, as you can see, very impressed.

In other news, Cessa has already managed to lose one of her grazing muzzles so thoroughly that three of us searching the two pastures where it could be can't find it (which was today, and I hurt, and that's all I'm saying about that).  We're basically gonna have to let the mower find it if it's in the north pasture, because if it's there, it's buried deep in the grass or in some hollow we can't see because of the grass.  It could also be in the pond in the main pasture.  Who knows...

But it's okay.  Vet's going to have us try some thyroid medication, and Cessa has to stay in the arena, getting a little hay and just enough ration balancer to take her meds until she does start losing weight.  (She's got a little bit of grass to chew on as well, since the arena has grass, but it's short and the vet said it's OK.)

...I may still have some Tile stickers coming from Amazon so that I can GPS tag the damned muzzles, though. lol

And in local health news, our dumbass governor has opened up the state "partially" and half the damned population is out acting like it's Spring Break.  Second Quarantine is gonna be even worse than First Quarantine was, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a Thing.  Ugh.

Fall? Winter? Who knows!

'Tis the season of "is it worth it to drive to the barn?"

And it's been worth it a few times.  I mean, I got blackmail pictures:

Very cute

The side-eye on this one cracks me up.

She puts up with me... lol

I also made it out to chat with the vet about Cessa's loud breathing issue, since she's done it a couple of times at slower than trot/canter (which she was doing at the trainer's).  We'd put it off then because she had a cold shortly after she came home, so we were thinking maybe she was brewing something. Not so much this time, so... vet.

Turns out, fat mare has allergies. Like her human. (I thought it was "look like your pet" not "share medical conditions with your pet..." lol)

We knew she had some allergies; she gets some thin/balding patches when she sheds.  Because of that, we're falling down on the side of "more allergy issues" rather than "heaves" - per the vet, who said they're related, but since we knew about the balding... allergies was more likely.

Step one is putting Vicks on her nose to see if that helps her breathe better.  (It will definitely help me breathe better, as I discovered this weekend when I tried it out and discovered that she does not give a shit as long as there are cookies involved.)  And if that doesn't work, we move up to something stronger until we find where she needs to be to be comfortable.

lol Just... maybe stop short of the full on "let's flush her sinuses and lungs."  As I told the vet, we're talking about a 13 year old broodmare whose job is to have a few more babies and cart me around once a week or so.  We might go as far as to do a Training-level dressage test.  We might jump as high as two whole feet.  She might have to work an entire day someday - terrible, I know.  Comfortable is where we're aiming.  Dumping thousands into her so we can continue a high-performance career?  Nnnnot so much.

NaBloPoMo Day 09 - Any injuries that occurred from riding

Oooo, yeah.  I've had one or two - maybe not as spectacular as some, but I am perfectly okay with that, universe!

The very first one wasn't the result of a fall - but it was the result of a totally barn-sour mare, an instructor not paying any attention, and a kid that didn't realize warning signs were being given until the hoof impacted the thigh.

Same mare, different day.

There was the time a certain bay mare of my instructor's decided that she didn't like how I was lunging her.  Her choice of how to express this was to flip me the equine bird and take off at a full gallop for the other end of the arena.

Yes, I'm talking about you.

But hey, that was the day I discovered that:
a) Flat canvas lunge lines can cause some hellacious rope burn, and
b) The water at the bottom of black horse troughs is still cold, even in the middle of summer in an unshaded spot, and
c) Cold water doesn't really do much for rope burn blisters.

There was the time I found out that leather reins can also cause rope burn, when a certain idiot chestnut Arab mare of that same instructor's dumped me.  (Through no fault of her own, really - that was a confidence issues fall.  In hindsight, it's both a vaguely hilarious fall and pretty pathetic.  Hooray for a slow-motion fall as a result of a perfectly predictable behavior!)

Good with kids, but a brain full of butterflies.

Same instructor, third instance (though in her defense, I rode with her for a decade).  Big brown Thoroughbred chickened the hell out when a car went down the gravel road near the arena and spooked, first into a gallop and then out from under me.

Actually, you can almost see the section of fence where I fell in this picture.  It's a bit further to the right.

Two problems here.
1) I was riding in the morning before college classes.  I basically had time to leave the barn when I was done, get back to my apartment, shower, and go to class.
2) When I landed, I landed sitting on one hip, with my elbow slung up on the (tilted) arena fence.  Imagine, if you will, a pose something like this, only sitting on the right hip with the legs extended to the side, and you've just about got the right idea.

I got back on, we finished the lesson, and then I went home, showered, and headed to campus.  My first class was at 12:30.

By the time I got home that night - 5:30 or so - I had a bruise basically from hip to knee on my right thigh, a pair that together perfectly matched the fenceline if I bent my elbow, and one on my left shin that I never quite figured out where the hell it came from.  Every one of them was a spectacular shade of purple.

I would like to note that shoving a gallon baggie of ice down my pants to try and make the giant freaking bruise less sore was not entirely effective.  Hilarious and frustrating, depending on just what it was I was trying to do at the time, but not effective.