Best laid plans...

What do they say?

Whatever the saying, don't make any plans, ever, with horses. That's my takeaway.

I took the day off of the farm yesterday to spend some time with the pups. I took them on a really nice morning hike to a local state park that I haven't had the chance to explore yet. It was delightful and they had a super fun time.

Happy Pups.

Monday's forecast was looking pretty grim with thunderstorms due all morning and throughout the early afternoon but I was determined to get out to the barn to take Riley on a maiden voyage around the barn.

Riley had other ideas and when I grabbed him from his shed I realized he had ripped his brand new shoe off. Grrrrr. I haven't even had a chance to ride him since he got the leather pads and shoes! AGH! Oh, and it was on his LF, you know, the problem hoof. Sigh. It took some convincing to get him to walk past the scary brush and cat house again on the way to the barn, but he actually settled really quickly. I wrapped his hoof with some vet wrap, put some ointment on the gash he sustained in turnout (looks like it happened on a tree) and fly sprayed the crap out of him. (The BO found us and mentioned that if I leave my fly spray hanging up, they'll spray him every morning for me!) I decided despite the gimpy leg, we'd go exploring. There's so much cool stuff to look at around the farm and he's going to have to address it at some point! So off we went, through the grass jump field, and around a part of the xc course around the perimeter of the property, down to the arena (which they were abut to drag) and back past all the farm animals (swans, pigs, goats, et al). He was quite good abut everything! While in the arena, I thought I'd jog him to see if he was super lame (he wasn't), but he was lazy and a bit uneven):

Why am I doing all the work? Lazy bones. In other news, Whole30 must be working, I'm looking svelte!

I was pretty grumpy by the time we left. I was admittedly really excited to get back on, especially considering how sound he's been looking! A call has been made to the farrier and hopefully he'll be out tomorrow to put a new shoe on him. Sadly, I took a spin around the field to look for the shoe to no avail. Just flushing money down the drain!

 At least he's looking shiny and happy (oh and completely awkward during his growth spurt):

The Odd Couple. Also, his fly mask's ear is hanging on by a thread!

Hopefully the shoe goes back on successfully, he managed to rip a big chunk out of his toe (where the clip was) and we'll get some evening rides in this week!

Ps. I'm nearing 200 posts and I'm thinking of organizing a fun post with prizes!