the drama queen + his new play things

There's something important to know about Charlie: his middle name is Overreaction. Like. Major Overreaction.

It's especially important that individuals involved with his care are aware of this facet of Charlie's personality. Stoic he is not.

"the pink haired massage lady touched me right here!!" - charlie, probably

We got our first taste of Charlie's drama queen, "woe is me!" personality when he colicked during his first week or so at home with me. According to Charlie, he was DYING OMG. Much stretching and nose pointing and flinging himself upon the ground as if the end was quite nigh.

However, a little banamine and 20min of handwalking later and the colic was entirely forgotten bc OMG THE F*ING FLIES ARE BITING ME HOLY SHIT THEY ARE KILLING MEEEEE!!!.

"stranger danger!!!! except i kinda like it tho"

Charlie's delicate constitution was again apparent last October when I got that most dreaded of texts from the program director: Charlie came in from the field three-legged lame with heat and swelling around his suspensory. Yuuuuup. The barn mgrs were legitimately convinced Charlie had blown his suspensory (no easy task!) within a month of becoming mine.

big fat eggbutt snaffle as per Stephen Birchall's recommendation. the code word for finding this kind of bit on ebay was "heavy." this is old silver, not stainless steel, and it's as big as my thumb

I didn't blog about it at the time bc... ehh. But we took a 'wait and see' approach by relegating him to stall rest with standing wraps, poultice, icing and bute to get the swelling down over the course of a couple days before re-evaluating to determine whether a vet was needed. And? Lol he was totally back to normal in like, three days.

So, moral of the story is that ... well. Charlie is a typical thin-skinned TB in that he's kinda a little fragile haha. Or at least he considers himself as such! And it can be quite easy to be sent into a panicky tailspin when he suddenly presents as seriously injured or sick.

verdict? it's acceptable. not much of a difference noted. it lives on my dressage bridle but my jump bridle still has the HS KK on it, which he's going well in too.  seems like a good bit to have in the war chest tho - and for $25, why not?

So anyway... Back to this past week. Charlie had Monday off after his busy weekend while I scampered down to DC. Then on Tuesday he got a massage session with a new body worker. He was a little defensive when she would get to his ouchier spots, but she did a nice job of showing him that she wasn't going to hurt him and he had lots of good releases.

No big 'aha' moments from the session - much like Charlie's chiro/acupuncturist, her findings were basically that "he's got some predictable wear and tear but nothing crazy."

raise your hand if you read Sarah's post and immediately knew i'd be picking up one of these badboys too

He got the next day off too (Wednesday, if you're keeping track) while I was back down in DC, then Thursday was his scheduled return to work. So imagine my surprise when, upon entering Charlie's stall and observing him eating his hay, I started wondering whether he had suddenly turned up neurologic on me haha.

can't wait for the phone tripod to arrive too haha! i'm thinking this blue tooth remote will be particularly useful for recording bits and pieces of my dressage lessons

Charlie was weirdly..... twitching in his neck. As in, he would suddenly flinch and jolt every couple of moments. I wondered if maybe the massage had given him strange sensations in his neck... but pulled him out and made him lunge around me a little bit to observe further. Nothing else seemed amiss, so I put him in the cross ties. Where he continued to periodically flinch and twitch.

Pretty quickly we isolated his mouth as the source - and then further refined it to the front of his mouth. Where, upon closer inspection, his lip was evvvver so sliiiightly fat. On just one side. And of course we couldn't possibly touch his lip or open up his mouth for a little looksie - it was far too painful!!

does it still count as a full set if none of it technically matches? charlie's leg protection setup is basically complete now - and let's not forget his bell boots up front too haha

I hopped on to just move him around, but it soon became apparent that the head flicking and twitching was much too distracting and whatever was buggin' him would likely interfere with my ability to... idk, steer and stuff haha. So Charlie got some bute and a stern lecture about how he's getting sent back if he goes all neuro or turns into a head shaker.

And the next day? I figured he'd either be 100% recovered or 100% dead, bc that seems to be the way things work in Charlie world lol. Lucky for all involved, he was recovered haha. And we were able to take a peek inside his mouth to discover the teeensiest tiiiiiniest little scratch. Like maybe Charlie got some rough hay stuck up in there. And just. Could. Not. Deal. lol....

i've wanted one of these cut back LeMieux saddle pads forever but had a hell of a time ordering it (they were seemingly back-ordered indefinitely). finally, at long last, i got it tho!!!

At least he did in fact recover tho haha. And we finally got to ride on Friday, wherein Charlie was as close to "fresh" as he ever gets, considering the massage, time off, and bute haha. He was actually bouncy in his trot - for maybe the first time ever lol. He felt good!!

it actually works better with the saddle's flap shape than i had hoped!

Which was great bc I had another big weekend planned for him - posts coming shortly. And naturally I wanted to test drive some of our newer goodies. The reality is that I actually haven't gotten a ton of new stuff for Charlie. Most of what he uses has been repurposed from Isabel's collection of gear.

Slowly but surely, tho, he's amassing his own wardrobe that's not just hand-me-downs. Which is fitting - the big guy should have his own stuff, right?

full set of boots and fun shaped saddle pad!! the picture is slowly coming together!

That is, provided the sensitive creature isn't felled by another wayward speck of rough hay haha. I swear, for all of my teasing Izzy for her "Princess" behavior, she was 100x more hardcore than this giant goofy gelding lol. 

Like I'm absolutely positive that Charlie would feel the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds. Nobody but a real princess could be that sensitive!! 

Do you have a delicate hot house flower of a horse too? Or is yours made of tougher stuff? Have you ever been convinced that your horse might actually be acutely dying, only to discover that the reports of his imminent death had been greatly exaggerated?