The blog from last night that the internet refused..
Magnum's Status: Getting Sick
My Status: Exhausted
Fun German Fact of the Day: Germans say squeezing the floor instead of sweeping it. Not sure if this an a mispronunciation or if they mean it, either way I'm adopting it because it's awesome and it makes sweeping better.
The entire barn is sick - the vet says it's just the flu and to wait it out, but he also said the older horses wouldn't get it and they're all getting hit about 48 hours in. Magnum is lethargic, never left the corner of his stall today, dehydrated and running at 102.6. He has a bit of a runny nose but not as bad as some and he's not coughing yet. Florida and Magnum really aren't agreeing, this is issue number four. Magnum didn't get ridden on Christmas since I went to meet family I'd never met before; spending Christmas on the beach is definitely better than spending it on the ice. Probably a good thing he had the day off though, maybe he built up some strength to fight off this bug.
We're really limited on what we can do in the barn since almost all of them are showing some symptoms, I rode my jumper horse for about 20 minutes and she started coughing - she even lives in the field and hasn't been touching noses with anyone else. Then I got to ride Walter, the horse with the strange shoes. He is the first Grand Prix horse I've sat on, TGT gave me a mini lesson with him, a few lead changes, shoulder in, haunches in, half pass and what was almost a canter pirouette if we had collected just a bit more. TGT told me to stop doing a haunches in with my body, I need to keep my outside elbow by my side and sit up straight so I'm not twisting with him, then just put my outside leg back and play with my inside rein - essentially the same thing with the half pass, once I stopped twisting my shoulders and giving away my outside rein it was clean and easy. I don't know what I'm missing on the change with this horse, I slide my leg like she tells me, but she's having a hard time explaining anything to do with timing to me and I'm having a tough time figuring it out. This is my big issue with a lot of their gadgets - the timing isn't so important to them because it's so much harder for the horse to make a mistake, I can already feel my hands getting lazy because it doesn't matter so much what I do with them when the horse can't feel the smaller differences as they're no longer a direct line to his mouth anymore.
No riding for Mr. Magnum today, I bundled him up tonight and soaked his hay to try and force some water down him, I also tried the Horse Quencher that I had bought for the trailer ride down - he wasn't interested in it then and it didn't make him drink now either. I'm becoming less optimistic about the Ocala show, I think he's had more days off then ridden since we arrived, I'm very hesitant to send in entries.
I planned on talking about blankets tonight, but I'm too tired - maybe tomorrow for the craziness that is layering heavyweights for 30 degree weather.
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