Girl's Day: Three Creeks Conservation

Still managing to pick up some horse content here and there despite the ankle :) Ruby has adjusted well to our bareback hacks and abbreviated dressage schools, and she continues to be turned out 18ish hours a day so hopefully she isn't losing TOO much fitness. The occasional trail rides help with that, thankfully! And over the long weekend, I was able to get out again :) I loaned Ruby to a lady in our group and rode Trigger as a concession to my still not nearly 100% ankle, lol. 

He was REMARKABLY peppy! He offered to trot multiple times and kept up reasonably well with Ruby for a good portion of the ride. Even when we lagged back a little he still wasn't at the back of the pack generally - so unusual for him! I think he's missed trail riding :)

Ruby was her normal speedwalking rockstar self lol.

Remembered to stick a selzer in my bag for the ride this time haha. 

Playing in the water. At one point there was a drop off (that I clearly saw and was trying to steer him away from) and instead he intentionally dropped to his knees and thought very hard about going all the way down, silly boy. But the water did feel great!

Took a meander up to see the cave!

Ruby's version of snacks for the road haha. 

After a lovely low-key ride (approximately 5 miles in a little under 2 hours), one of the ladies let me stash the ponies at her place so we could go have a delicious brunch! Well okay everyone but me had lunch but I opted for breakfast food and had ZERO regrets. 

Iced coffee with Irish cream

DELICIOUS pancakes, home fries, and bacon. I was so stuffed. 

I'm really digging the trail riding crew we have put together this summer -- enough people that we can swap in and out as necessary when people have other plans and still have a good-sized group, and several of us have "spare horses" for those who want to hitch a ride. I'm still working on getting them to Indian Camp Creek or Broemmelsiek (lol), but we've definitely covered a lot of ground on the more central Missouri trails! We've even successfully worked out several trailerpool situations to conserve fuel! 

WW: River Rats

The heat wave really kicked off on Sunday, so after sweating my ass off during that 20 minute ride, we decided to hit the river! I'm a glutton for punishment so I wanted to take Penny AND Cici. In retrospect, Cici is old and set in her ways and a bit of a princess, so she will probably stay home on future trips and we'll just take Penny, who is a confirmed and unabashed river rat, lol. 

Hard to get pics of both dogs in my lap lol. 

I sent Penny out on the boat with my husband while I parked the trailer - Penny was displeased by this when she saw me walking down the ramp, and she attempted to fling herself off the front of the boat to get to me. 

Hanging out in the boat to see if that would soothe Cici's little lizard brain for a bit (what can I say, she takes after her owner haha). 

Chasing energetic children was THE BEST in Penny's opinion. 

Cici was only interested when we broke out the food, because begging is what she does best. 

This series is called..... "Penny finds a dead fish"

"Oooooh yes"

Yeah, she had to have a thorough bath when she got home lol. 

Floating on a cushion!

Brief nap

Meeting lots of big dogs!

Literally PTFO

Soooooo tired. 

Success!

Sunday morning I was able to cram my brace into a boot and sit on my horse! Took me three pairs of boots (gee I guess it's good I own so many lol), but we made it work!

I didn't want to put too much weight on it and reverse the progress we've already made, so I opted to ride bareback. Comfortable and easy, since I have the Brockamp! Thank God I got that 3-step mounting block, so getting on was pretty easy. We didn't do too much, just a quick 20 minute hack and I pressed all the buttons to make sure the trot and canter were still there (why wouldn't they be, she was off for a week, but my lizard brain was worried). 

When I finished up, I had her take me back to the mounting block so I could carefully swing down onto that, so it wasn't a big drop on my ankle (or on just my left leg, since I was already feeling some compensation pains from last week). Such a good girl!

Best Bay Mare TM lol

Guess it's time to see about scheduling a virtual lesson! Except of course now we're in what will probably end up being a two-week heat advisory, when the heat index is close to 90 even at 5:30 am, blergh. Guess it'll be time to get my sweat on, lol. I'm a little afraid TrainerB will only have virtual lesson times in the evenings, and my arena is NOT in the shade so is miserable in June/July/August evenings, but I guess if we want to be ready for Pony Cup, we'll just have to suffer a bit! lol

Crisis Mostly Averted

Well... I feel.... sheepish is probably the only applicable word. I had my follow up with the orthopedic doctor on Thursday afternoon. He pulled up my x-rays and showed me the bone chip and explained that basically the fracture was caused by a very bad sprain and one of the ligaments had pulled the small piece of bone off my talus. Not bad enough to need surgery (which I knew from the ER), but obviously very painful. And then here's where he differed from the doom and gloom of the ER and their 4-6 week in the boot prediction. He was happy with how my ankle looked at the appointment and the lack of swelling (I mean it was swollen but it's not like. SWOLLEN swollen) and range of motion that I had, especially on no anti-inflammatories (because I still never remember to take them in the morning only at night lol). He confirmed that I had been doing the right thing by (mostly) staying off my feet, and continuing to rest/ice/compress/elevate it as much as possible. 

I was getting a little tired of my camera roll being entirely dog photos in this chair

My friends sent me a care package because they are the fucking best <3 <3 <3 <3

He said for someone young/fit/healthy (apparently he meant me lol), he wouldn't recommend that level of inactivity (4-6 weeks exclusively in the boot) because of the atrophy it would cause in the tendons and ligaments -- also like JFC after only four days in the boot my back and my hip hurt in new and creative ways from the compensation, it was awful. He gave me a sheaf of paperwork describing PT exercises, recommended I pick up a smaller ankle brace so I can DRIVE again, and said I could follow up in 6 weeks if I still had pain but basically let my body tell me where the limit was on activity for the next few weeks. We swung by a specialty pharmacy on the way home and located a brace in the style he had recommended, and then proceeded home where I COMPLETELY overdid it by helping with chores because that's fundamentally who I am as a person lol. Don't worry, I spent the remainder of the evening with it elevated and iced, and I'm continuing to rest/ice/compress/elevate as much as humanly possible. 

Also using the Asissi Loop, because why TF not? 

If I'm able to jam the new brace into a riding boot sometime in the next week or two, I might still be able to make some summer shows, especially now that I've got the set up for virtual lessons ironed out! Wish me luck!

Pivo Meet Success

Sunday night we finally had some time to fuss with the wifi/Pivo situation. It was hot and sticky and my preference was actually for DH to take photos with the DSLR, since I hadn't seen how Cinna was going in so long, but he was determined to make Pivo Meet work. And he did! (lot of good it does me now, lol). Saturday I had posted some screenshots in the Pivo group asking for opinions on anything I could do to improve the video clarity, and Pivo did let me know that Meet doesn't film in the same resolution as Play, which is why I was seeing such a drastic difference in video quality. That was actually a helpful comment, unlike the dickhead who was like "Meet is just for an instructor to watch you it's not supposed to be high resolution" -- well excuse TF out of me, I just assumed it would be easier to teach if you could SEE the person riding, but whatever.... lol. T also very kindly sent me a link to her riding session Saturday morning so I could get a feel for what her trainer sees during THEIR virtual lessons, so I'm confident we did finally get the quality good enough. My plan was to message TrainerB Tuesday to set up a virtual lesson... but ya'll know how that went instead, womp womp. 

He learned it was better to turn his video off lol. 

Not optimal moments or anything but at least I could see the video quality was much clearer!

I love that she's watching him fuss with the tripod in the mirror lol. 

She seemed pretty tolerant of the new bit I got her, a Fager baucher (RW was running them on super sale for MDW don't judge me lol)

Looking SO MUCH like her mom here

Worth it for this shot alone lol. 

The sunshade I got to protect my phone from overheating came in on Monday

Penny for scale lol

Also set up this nifty cable reel so I don't have cat5 all over my mudroom haha. 

I did let my trainer know we figured things out so eventually once I'm cleared to ride again, we can try the virtual thing! In the meantime, everything is just sitting in the corner of my guest bedroom, taunting me all day as work... sigh.