charlie's pre-season retreat

This is my third winter with Charlie now, which feels kinda crazy to say. Our first winter was just after I brought him home from the thoroughbred adoption facility. At that point, we were basically focused entirely on Charlie's transition from race horse into riding horse, including the under-saddle restarting process, and his own physical let down transformation.

goose is our resident farm pig

Our second winter together was in some ways obviously very different after having had a full year together. But in other ways, it was kinda similar. For instance: we went into winter slowly, just rehabbing following Charlie's splint surgery. Then almost exactly one year ago from this point, Charlie stepped on that god forsaken roofing nail...

he's a big piggo haha. charlie's always mildly interested, but not bugged out

So ya know. Maybe we don't exactly have a great winter track record! But generally I think that's an ok thing, ya know? It's good to have some down time throughout the year, scheduled or otherwise.

Like late this past fall when Charlie aggravated another splint injury and earned roughly 6 weeks of downtime. I had planned to give him time off anyway, so it worked well enough for my purposes (except for, uh, that whole ordeal with forfeiting yet another clinic entry... le sigh).

it's funny to me that you almost can't tell a difference in charlie's expression when he's totally drugged out vs sober haha

That's always the way with horses, tho, right? Like we can do our best in planning everything out sensibly on ye olde calendar, but things are still gonna happen when they happen.

At least there's one aspect I *can* control: Charlie's routine maintenance. Specifically, I wrote last year about hock injections being a part of his annual care plan.

sad charlie can't believe he has to deal with this weather tho!

For pretty banal reasons too: Charlie's 6 year track career included injections, I have x-rays from his PPE that show very mild arthritic changes in one hock in particular, the horse will flex positively on them, and considering he has a well documented history of resisting pressure when even the least bit uncomfortable...

Well. All these considerations are sufficient for me to feel comfortable with this degree of maintenance.

me too, charlie. me too. these little flash blizzards stink!

The timing worked out well too. Realistically speaking, Charlie's been keeping pretty busy this winter so far! After recovering from the splint injury, we've basically been full speed ahead.

Aside from regular riding and lessons, we had an epic xc school in November, a Phillip Dutton clinic in December, another xc clinic with Dan Clasing in January, and the combined dressage + cavaletti clinic with trainers C & K plus the Sally Cousins lesson in February.

meanwhile, i watched a magna wave appt and am now eager to try it for charlie!

Plus, with the saddle shopping extravaganza I was very eager to log as much trial saddle time as possible. Just to really be totally sure that I was getting what we both wanted with this new piece of tack. Ya know? So the hours were logged haha.

bc clearly this horse leads a difficult life

Making right now feel like a good time to switch gears and focus on Charlie's wellness ahead of the upcoming season. A nice byproduct of spending so much time in the last year reworking my budget is that now I have a fairly futuristic sense of what my upcoming expenses will be. In other words: entry season is nearly upon us haha!

it's so hard being charlie! look at those smooshed nostrils!!

So hopefully taking care of the veterinary expenses now will help spread out all the other costs? In any case, from a financial perspective and in light of the upcoming calendar, now felt like the best time to get this particular portion of Charlie's annual wellness plan taken care of.

my spidey senses were tingling lol - incoming!!

The injections themselves were fairly routine. I ended up using yet another new vet for this go round, since the vet who has handled Charlie's injections in the past (and also did his PPE) is unfortunately not practicing at the moment due to family reasons.

cute video of sleeping, snoring and dreaming ponies here, if you're into that sorta thing lol

So this new vet was recommended to me by my dressage trainer. And we happened to schedule our appointment right smack on top of a random blizzard in Baltimore, ugh.

Like, seriously tho, we got about 3-5" of slushy icy snow over the course of a single morning. That morning happening to be the day of the appt. Driving out and home from the barn probably took literal years off my life, ugh, and naturally everything was melted by the following day. But whatever, we got it done.

meanwhile: i picked up a new fuzzy girth that has more coverage around the buckles!

And Charlie proceeded to enjoy a nice chunk of downtime. Which was good for both of us, considering the round-trip haul to the barn every day can honestly be exhausting for me too.

Spring time is around the corner tho, and our first entries of the year are due soon. So hopefully after this little breather we'll both be feeling refreshed and ready to go!

and a sheepskin bc i <3 sheepskins and am eager to see if it'll work with my new saddle! 

At least, that's the plan haha. Bc everything with horses is always in pencil anyway, right? But I try to be a boy scout about these things: Always prepared!

There are still so many things left to accomplish before we're actually realistically ready for the competition season (like, uh, probably xc schooling again haha). But at least the horse is physically as prepped as he's ever gonna get after a nice little chunk of time off!