I had my post-op appointment today, and the doctor cleared me to ride. He said I can do whatever I want- I'm young and healthy and healed well. Yay!
Side note- never ask the internet for advice. I asked people on a Facebook group their experiences with laparoscopic appendectomies and going back to riding, and they were all "4 weeks at least." Hah. So there. Back to it I go!
2 weeks ago, I started getting a stomach ache on my way home from work. It wasn't too bad at first. But it got pretty bad, pretty quick, and by 8:30 I had made my husband come home from work (he works swing shift in the summer) and take me to the ER, thinking it was appendicitis.
The ER was busy, but passing out in triage will get you in the back faster. Yay? I finally got some pain meds/anti nausea meds through an IV drip and had to wait around until they could get my in for a CT scan. By midnight, I'd had the scan and they determined it was in fact my appendix and it needed to come out. I hung out in the hospital not sleeping all night, and finally had the surgery the next day at about noon.
Drugged and bored in the ER
I managed to recover pretty quickly and was back to part days at work two days later, but the nurse told me I shouldn't ride for 4-6 weeks, unless I want to get internal scar tissue in my abdomen, which is apparently a bad thing. Hm. I go in for my post-op appointment this week, and I'm hoping since I'm making such a quick recovery that I can go back to riding soon. Especially since my favorite clinician is coming up in 2 weeks, and I need to get back on the pony!
When I was talking with the Dr., he noticed my unicorn stuffie. I told him that any time someone in my group of horsey friends is in the hospital, we need to have unicorn magic. Then I realized that my friends are in the hospital more than is normal. I guess that comes with being in a high-risk sport. Even outside of the broken bones and sprains that tend to come with horses, my trainer was in and out of the hospital a couple years ago with thyroid cancer, a friend of ours just recently had a lump removed, and I had my appendix out. We are definitely using up our unicorn magic, but it's worked so far. Here's hoping it continues!
Me and unicorn stuffie and my unicorn sweatshirt after being released
There's a blog hop going around right now, and one of the questions is something about being friends with your trainer. I am so happy to count my trainer/coach as one of my closest friends. We have been in the teacher/student relationship (both directions! I taught her an art class), the employer/employee relationship, and we're still good friends. When I texted her that I was in the hospital, she was ready to drop everything and come (she brought the unicorn and food for my husband the next morning, which was amazing...the poor guy was running between home, work and hospital all night), and I hope she knows it goes both ways!
Anyway, I am back to working full time, and hoping to be back to riding the Tony beast soon. He's perfectly happy just hanging out on pasture all day, but I sure miss riding!
All I've done with the beast in the past two weeks
Well, we did it. We went to a rated show and survived! I have been groom/support system/videographer at SO many shows over the last 4 years, and I am so happy I finally got to take a horse to one of them. It's been a goal for so long, but it's always felt a little out of reach. My horse wasn't broke enough and I was broke. This year I really worked on getting my horse broke, and getting out there doing things (clinics, schooling shows, etc), and actively saved money from my side-business of pet portraits and pony painting parties (we don't paint on ponies, we paint ponies on canvas. It's fun ;) ).
So I made a plan to do 2 different shows this summer. The first one didn't work out. The timing was bad. So that left me with one. I was hoping to get my bronze scores for First Level this summer, but since I was only doing one show, it didn't really make sense to pay for all the memberships. I have my USDF and USEF, but I would need Tony's and Tony's owners' memberships. So I entered the Opportunity Classes at First Level.
My travel buddy M and I left last Friday morning (edit, this sat in my drafts for forever...we left July 8. It's August now. Yikes) to stop at the lesson barn to give the ponies baths (neither of us has a wash rack or warm water at home) before heading down to the show grounds to settle in and school. There was, of course, a wash rack back up with 7 horses leaving for the show. Good thing the eventers had left for their show the day before, or we would have been there all day. So we hung out and finally got the ponies bathed, wrapped and loaded.
So embarrassing. What you can't see are his
rainbow unicorn pillow wraps under the pink.
We had a pretty easy drive to the show grounds. It's only about an hour from our lesson barn, and it's a beautiful drive.
You really can't grasp just how high above the water we are. 180 feet.
Narrow bridge. Horse trailer. Pedestrians. It's a fun time.
We get there, fluff up our stalls and settle our ponies in. We opted to haul our own shavings in rather than buy them at the show office. Next time, I'll probably pay the extra $5 or so and just have them ready for me. I'm cheap though ;) After the ponies were in their stalls, happily munching on hay (or watching everything, as Tony was doing), we set up our camp. The very best part about the Whidbey show grounds is that you can camp right next to your stalls. I could poke my head out of the tent and check on the horses. Plus they don't charge a camping fee. Another plus in my (pocket)book. Our tent was seriously massive, and we had a queen airbed, one of those double high ones. M and I know how to camp right. The rest of our showing crew...not so much.
After getting all settled and taking the ponies on a hand walk around the show grounds, it was time to saddle up and school in the rings before they closed them for the night. Tony was good, looked at a couple things, but ultimately settled in and did fine in both the warm up and competition ring. The ring can be a spooky one because it's right near the woods, and deer tend to dart about. Thankfully the deer stayed away while we were riding. After riding, it was dinner, hand grazing, and bed time.
Mmmmm...grass.
On both show days, I decided to ride two tests. Might as well get as much out of the weekend as I could. On Saturday, my first test was around 10:30. I didn't want a super long warm up, as we would be riding twice, and I knew I'd run out of horse. He's not the most fit this summer, what with me working a full time office job. Whomp, whomp. His warm up was awesome. His canter felt so good, and he was forward and on my aids.
On the way to our test. My stock tie went limp. It was my first time tying one. You can hardly see, but there's unicorns on it!
Our test was okay. We did 1-1 first. It was good, not great. I have to say, I was super happy with the kid though. We went in and got it done. He had some nice moments, but there was no sparkle. I was thankful for an obedient pony, and no spooking. We had mostly 6's, a couple 5's and 7's. One 4 on our canter transition, where he hopped behind into it and was just generally on the forehand and ugly. Our free walk was painfully slow. Just not stepping through in back, and barely in stretch in front. But we got through it, and it actually wasn't as bad in the video as it felt. Overall, I was happy with Tony. No disobedience, no talking back. Sadly we got no cute points! I am all about cute points. We usually get some sort of comment like "nice pair" or "adorable" or something. I know some riders with Haflingers do not appreciate those comments, as they feel like it's condescending, but I don't care. I ride a giant Barbie pony, and I do it with pride! I came out of the ring with tears in my eyes...don't worry, they were happy tears. It's been a long road, and we finally made it into the rated ring (even if they were "just" opportunity classes). I've worked so hard to get here, and had to save up my pennies all year to make it work, and I was just so happy. As I came out of the ring, one of my barnmates greeted me with "Well, it's too bad he bucked in the canter." Um, thanks. But no thanks. I'm happy with him so shush.
Totally cute.
I have to say I was super disappointed when I got my test back. Not in the score. It was a 61 and change, which isn't great, but scores were low all day, and I was totally happy with it. I was disappointed that there was not one positive comment on my whole test. Lots of negative/neutral comments, and on any of the 7's I got, there was just nothing written. Sigh. The collective marks were completely illegible, and not super helpful one way or the other once we deciphered it.
Our second test (1-2) was almost two hours later, so I walked Tony back to stabling and let him chill out for a while. I opted to get one just 20 minutes before my ride, do some walking, and a super short warm up so he didn't die on me in the ring. If he's tired, it's nearly impossible to have any sort of decent canter transition. Entering the ring, I made sure to push him on right away. Our trot work was much better. More forward and sparkly. Judge said it was too quick. Whatever. I made a plan to try for more in the freewalk, but it backfired when he jigged a few steps. He still wasn't stepping through enough in the back. Things to work on. Our first canter transition, Tony cross cantered to start, so we got majorly dinged there. Even though we had a few mistakes, I thought the quality of the work was better than the first test, and I thought for sure we'd get higher marks throughout the trot, and end up with about an even score with the jigging walk and bad canter moments. Our leg yields were pretty good. Trainer said that the one to the right was perfect for a first level leg yield. It went exactly where it was supposed to, and he was moving almost parallel to the rails. I think I got a 6. Sigh. Still got about the same marks on the trot, and lower on walk and canter for a 58 or 59%. Collective marks, which were slightly more legible this time (same judge), were that we needed more preperation for this level.
Butt-out like some sort of weird dressage/hunt seat hybrid rider. But look at my pretty pony!
I realized that judges don't know where you've come from, what you are working with, or what your horse used to do. They just see what you are presenting them that day. And even though I thought Tony did amazingly, the judge saw a pair that may not be ready for First Level- a horse still on the forehand in the canter with iffy transitions, lengthenings that are not quite there yet. I'm still super happy with the beast. I'll leave a video at the end. It's nothing special, and there are mistakes, but I think it's a solid test for where we are in life. And man, we clean up nice, I have to say ;)
A blue ribbon for each test! We may or may not have been the only pair in all of our classes...
Day 2 we left the forelock long.
My dad videoed for me in our second test. My parents were able to watch me ride competitively for the first time ever! It was their last weekend in the country, and they made it work to watch my brother run a marathon in the morning, and then they drove an hour and a half to watch my ride and take me out to lunch.
I won't post a recap of day two...it was almost exactly the same. We had good moments, and bad. Scores were almost identical to day 1. We were both tired, but we made it through. Tony walked around the grounds on the buckle, and was a complete gentleman. He acted like an old pro. I just love this horse so much, and I hope we can continue improving!
