Hurry Up and Wait

Soooo I didn't post last week. And I didn't run out of time, I wasn't busy, none of my normal excuses. It just came and went and honestly nothing is going on.

Due to circumstances outside everyone's control the infancy the 2016 show season at my barn hit a bit of a speed bump. A bunch of stuff got cancelled so we've just kind of been farting around at home. Add to that that it SNOWED last week for some reason and I feel like we've just sort of stalled (pun... intended?)

Christmas Day. Please note, that is a t-shirt.

Relatively speaking, we were incredibly lucky this winter. Yeah, it was in the teens for a couple weeks. Yeah, we had a huge blizzard where we got a season's worth of snow in thirty six hours. But it was 60* on Christmas Day and Runkle's been shedding since January so on the whole it's been very mild. Which I appreciate.

Two weeks later. Snow.

That doesn't mean both Runkle and I aren't super ready for the time to change.

I did buy some crap I'm pretty excited about. My good friend A has an extensive horse library and she's lent me several books, one of which is about in hand work. If you walk past my cube at lunch I'm probably reading it. So I finally broke down and bought a nice lunge cavesson, and I'm starting to accumulate the other accouterments (side reins, surcingle, long reins). I'm really looking forward to adding a day of non riding work to Runkle's regimen to help build his topline as well as our relationship.

I've witnessed first hand that racehorses go through an awkward period of letdown between 6-12 months off the track. When I got Runkle he was used to galloping two miles and eating three buckets of grain a day. Ripping a horse out of that and saying "okay, you get one third of that and p.s. you eat grass now mostly" ends up making them look like crap.

Runkle in racehorse mode.

There was definitely a period where he looked like poop and I thought "oh F, what have I done."

What look how scrawny and sad he looks??

I was paranoid about it, fussing over his grain and obsessing over how many holes I had to go up on his girth. I got him a corner feeder with a lip because he was dumping the standard feed pan all over the floor and losing a large portion of his grain. I scrutinized how much hay he was eating and how much he was running around in the field, and how huge his blankets draped on him.

By now I should accept that my trainers know more than me and I need to stop worrying. Neither of them seemed super fussed and attributed it to 'letdown' and promised that come spring, everything would be sorting itself out.

And god dammit they were right.

A sporthorse is born.

Runkle's ass is HUGE. His blankets are tight in the shoulder. He has learned the joy of grazing and hoovers his grain like a champ. I'm actually a little worried about when the spring grass comes in because I don't want him to reach hippo status.

So yeah, this was rambly and not focused, but I guess that's where we're at right now. Waiting for the season to start, waiting to go schooling and spend long hours braiding and grooming and hauling all over the East coast. Pardon the tired metaphor but it's the calm before the storm, and unlike a blizzard I'm way ready for it to get here!