The Owls Approve: fuckmykarmaman

The Drunken Moose.

2:59 PM
By Beka Burke
3 Comments

A Whiskey Sour

2:24 PM
By Beka Burke
7 Comments

I have happy news and shit news. To end on a better note, I'll start with the shit news.

My doctor's visit on Tuesday didn't go well. I am having to retake the medication, which fucks me up severely, so I asked Ox's owner if we could switch my normal Wednesday ride with Thursday. So after riding Archie and Ox last night, I took an apple I had to Whiskey. Thinking that I didn't have time to ride him, but I could still look him over and give him cuddles. En route to his pasture, I saw a group of about five people walking away from it. One of them looked vaguely familiar as his owner, so I verified and then introduced myself as the woman who's been riding him.

She introduced the people with her as his new owners.

I feel like this entire situation could have been handled better by his current owner, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I gave his new owners my phone number and told them to call me if anything didn't work out, because I would take him immediately. And then I proceeded to wish them a good night and give him his apple, with a side of sobbing into his mane. And if I hadn't switched my ride days, I might never have known, might never have made that possible connection.

When you go out to give an apple to the horse that you think might be The Next Horse, only to meet his surprise new owners on the way. #fml #nomorelosses #appaloosa #whiskeythehorse #ineedsomegoodnews

A post shared by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on Apr 27, 2017 at 7:39pm PDT

It was definitely a situation of counting my chickens before they hatched (I'm so southern sometimes, it hurts). In my mind, he was already my horse. I was thinking about having my farrier determine if he needed fronts, figuring out what his color would be (purple?), and sending him off for a month of dressage boot camp so someone better than me could install contact and straight.

They did seem like nice people and I'm sure he'll have a comfortable life. It's just not a life with me.

But, in better news, my little herd had a revolt. There have been too many horses on the property for too long. This would be relatively okay if the horses didn't depend on a shared resource (grass), but they do and now there is no grass.

Grass.

Ox's owner reached out to the barn owner and asked if we could move to his brother's facility across the street, which is dormant when movie horses aren't here, for at least the summer. We moved on Sunday and I swear to god that it felt like I was getting an apartment with my best friends.

I've never seen Archie play in his water. 😍

A post shared by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on Apr 24, 2017 at 11:31am PDT

There's a huge pasture with tall grass, a dressage court with a mirror, plenty of trails, and another field that we've turned into our jump pasture. All of our stuff is squeezed into the tack room and it's really like we just bought our own farm. And I really think Archie has put back some of the weight he lost. I'm okay with him being a little thin because it's better for his joints, but I still don't like butt bones and ribs.

April 13th on top, last night on bottom.

There's a little contention about how long we'll actually be staying, but any time is better than no time. So far, we've enjoyed our little paradise.

Despite all my rage..

4:17 PM
By Beka Burke
33 Comments

I couldn't help myself.

So, let's talk about the weekend because it wasn't really epic, with a side of bitching about my farrier, also not epic.

On Friday, when I had brief thoughts of power walking in the big, freshly mowed, calling-my-fucking-name field, I found out that Archie had thrown his other shoe. I know some people ride horses who are normally shod even when they are missing shoes, but I am not one of them. Specifically, because my farrier told me not to last summer, stating that his little hoofers would eventually crumble to nothing and he'd have nothing left on which to tack a shoe. Not so many words. Same gist.

So the Kid got cookies and groomed and had his hooves oiled (oiled?! yeah - to help prevent some minute amount of water absorption) and was tossed back out into the field to be a crippled pony. Prior to this discovery, I'd already ordered a cheap hoof wrap from SmartPak and an even cheaper bottle of hoof sealer. I vacillated heavily on the Keratex versus the cheap stuff, because the marketing and the word of mouth, but ultimately settled on Tuff Stuff because money.

Money. I eats it.

Good thing, too. The vet visit for the girls was roughly half a grand for their yearly vaccines, fecals, and heartworm tests. I miss employee discounts. Hard. The perk of all this was that the vet was super impressed the girls' weights and conditions. She said that Scarlette's mobility has improved since being on an OTC joint medication and Savannah had lost a few more pounds. Old dogs do not look or act old.

And then more less-epic stuff. Like the washer that my mom gave me seven years ago deciding that a metal-on-metal grinding noise was the best thing ever. Which we maybe fixed - next load will determine. And then my husband taught me to replace an iPhone screen, only I lost a screw, which didn't impress him, and then the screen we purchased for the phone fell apart almost immediately, so we had to put the old screen back on. Less-epic.

Ahem.

I got to watch other people ride on Sunday, including a Tennessee Walking Horse. I've never tried to photograph a gait and holy shit. Not nailed. Not nailed at all.

This, though? Nailed. Mostly. You can still see a bit of the blue leash above his left ear.

Which kinda-sorta brings us to this morning. BM sent me a text at 7:15 saying that the farrier, who has been on vacation, could be out that day. Awesome. Except I can't get money to the barn just like that, which I think the BM was willing to front me. Then the farrier asks if I want aluminum or steel. We did steel last summer and I'll have to review if they really made a difference, but they're slightly cheaper and cheaper is good right now, so I say steel. To which he replies that he would have to order them. Wait, what? So I say, whatever the man has on his trailer, let's nail to my horse so he can have feet. Oh, but nevermind. The farrier actually doesn't think that alums would be good right now anyways, so let's just wait for the steel to come in and we'll have Archie shod next Monday. Because.............. farriers run out of steel shoes?

Summertime Suck It.

2:01 PM
By Beka Burke
12 Comments

I reaaaaally want to bitch and moan about how hard it is to keep a horse fit and happy when he can't keep those magical little chunks of metal safely attached to his feet. But I also wanted to call this "summertime sadness" and it isn't. It just isn't. Life is pretty goddamn good, if I'll only allow it.

So what do you do with a pony with wet, crumbly shoeless feet?

...not a whole lot. (Other than peruse forums and cry a little on the inside that the vet's solution moving to a different part of the state isn't viable. Thinking of this and this. The Kid has already been on a feed-through for over a year.)

I did not drive through this shit in my little baby fiesta. I took a side road and another side road and finally had to drive through a smaller version of this.

I've been out to the barn several times this week, just to clean him up from the showers we've had, to slather him in various ointments and sprays, and just shove cookies in his face. I "rode" him the first day I realized he was missing a shoe (Sunday?), but I was afraid that he was going to be gimpy as it was the same foot he embedded. And he was.

I have hopped on him bareback for our walks back to the pasture. I'm thinking that tonight I might "ride" him bareback in the big pasture, even though he only has two comfortable bareback gaits: walk and three strides of choppy canter. This is centaur work, right Denny?

If you're wondering why my farrier hasn't jumped at the opportunity to reattach his shoe, said farrier has been on vacation this week. It makes the little tingles in my head go off, because it appears that there is always.something when I need a shoe fixed. (...and now I've found out about and met the other farrier... and he's really nice... and he does photography... and he let me hold his camera... and he answered allllll my questions about hot shoeing, which I had never seen before) (things to think about)

In other news, my coworker has been out for a month (again). The girls have a vet visit tomorrow ($$$). I'm picking up a piece of something tomorrow. And something else. You know, vague, so I have shit to write about later. If I write, because this has not been my strength lately. (what has?)

WW: Eye Quit.

4:35 PM
By Beka Burke
16 Comments