Um...hi again?

Have I really not posted anything since the end of January? Blog hop? What?

...oops?

I don't even have a good excuse. My laptop has been living in a wicker box I use as a cheap coffee table/storage for random crap, and I just haven't had a reason to pull it out aside from one day when it snowed and I worked from home. Frankly I'm surprised it booted up since I had a sneaking suspicion a 5-year-old computer would jump at the opportunity to be left for dead.

But nope. Way to go, Apple!

Anyway. My days have been filled with work, riding 2x/week, watching Parks and Rec, reading a really long book about AIDS for my book club, and taking Beckett for walks. He just has SO MUCH energy and it's a good way to tire him out. It does kind of make me wish I had a yard, though, so I could look like a crazy person walking her cat in private.

But there are some exciting things on the horizon...in the form of new members of the family!

Byron and I had been batting around the idea of getting Beckett a playmate, and he'd been dropping not-so-subtle hints like, "If we did get another kitten, where would we put another litter box?" so when he said he had a surprise that would BLOW MY MIND, I immediately knew it was a kitten.

Specifically, a Siamese. His family has owned applehead or "old-style" Siamese for his entire life, so I knew getting one eventually was somewhat inevitable.

We're picking up one of the three seal point males (the three on the left) next weekend from a breeder his family has known for years. Apparently in real life, they're not as cross-eyed and derpy as they are in the photo, but we shall see.

And....drumroll please....
I've been looking for a lease! A half-lease, to be specific. I've already tried out one, a 20-year-old OTTB owned by one of my trainer's friends. 

When relaxed under saddle, he sticks his tongue out too! A hilarious OTTB habit, apparently.

I LOVED his personality, and his name was Carlo...how perfect would that have been--Carla and Carlo? He had a very impressive "resume"--former steeplechaser and eventer. But he was definitely a jumper who could maaaaybe  (with a lot of work) do some dressage, and I'm looking for more of the opposite--a dressage horse that could do some jumping.

Martingale+giraffe impression does not equal easy dressage mount. He's 20 years old, so I don't anticipate being able to change him much...

I figure it is better for the horse to be more experienced where I am green, and it's OK for him to be a bit of a green jumper since I've been doing that for so long.

So that is where Midnight comes in. I'm trying him tomorrow.

I like that he looks like he's reaching for the bit in a relaxed way.

He's a 12 y/o TB named Midnight. Apparently he has mostly been used for dressage and trail riding, and has very balanced gaits, but his owner wants to start doing jumping gymnastics. I could do that, and it seems like he would be a good teacher as I learn more about dressage. And the facility where he's boarded, based on their website, looks TO DIE for--two outdoor arenas, an indoor, a small XC course and trails. Did I mention that it's only 30 min away?

Ideally I would like to use him to teach Byron too--but I'm not sure if his owner will agree. I can certainly see it from the owner's perspective--letting a totally unknown beginner ride your horse is not the most attractive prospect, and I'm not sure if Midnight is quiet enough anyway. Sigh...this is why I was initially leaning toward buying rather than leasing, but financially I am just too afraid of some kind of expensive accident on top of already-expensive regular costs.

But I'll find out tomorrow and let you all know how it goes! Wish me luck!

Priorities

Me: I showed (Coworker) our video of Beckett
Byron: Good for you baby MAKE FRIENDS
Me: she literally loled
Byron: Invite her for dinner!
Me: NO I hate friends
Byron: Glass of wine while shes in town?
Me: She's leaving tomorrow, and I have a lesson tonight
Byron: Great, then next time :)
Me: lesson>friendship

There are some things normal people just can't understand.


P.S.--Thanks again for everyone who is being patient with the blog hop technical issues. Should be working now but just comment or email at collegialequestrian {at} gmail {dot} com if you need help.

Beckett Update

Sorry if that last  post was nonsensical and/or possibly totally uninteresting to my horsey audience. I was pretty worried though! But Beckett was full of energy this morning and eating again :)

I gave him his pick of kibble, kibble soaked in water, and three types of wet food.

 Just waiting to see if he'll keep it down, but I'm hopeful--he seemed to feel much more comfortable after getting fluids last night. It's been about ten minutes since he ate, and now he's just sunning himself quietly rather than yowling and howling like he has been over the past few days.

Tired boy.

All of this has reminded me of I was in high school and still thought I wanted to be a vet. As part of a career mentoring program through my school, I did possibly the most boring internship ever at a vet clinic. I was hardly allowed to touch the animals because of the liability and because I wasn't being paid--despite the fact that I'd already worked as an assistant at a vet clinic and knew how to restrain animals safely (that has come in handy when putting on Beckett's soft claws!). At the internship, I basically just took notes on all the exams and surgeries for four hours twice a week.

One of the few things I remember clearly from the internship, though, was one day when I saw one of the veterinarians crouching down next to the cage of a little rescue kitten the clinic was spaying for free. I peeked into the cage too and saw the kitten munching away at her kibble.

"This is my favorite part," she said.


I think I completely understand what she meant now.

The Joys of Pet Ownership

Yep, go ahead and chew on that purse, Beckett. There's not anything of value in there anyway.

So I thought I got a fancy pants Bengal cat for free, but he seems intent on making up for it. We've been really worried about him since Thursday, when he threw up 7 times. We were debating bringing him to the emergency vet then, but he was still his normal, energetic self so we decided to wait till morning...when he seemed fine again, although he still wasn't eating much. So then we decided to wait until his scheduled regular vet appointment this Sunday. And then he threw up again in the evening when

HOLY CRAP. Beckett just walked across the keyboard and wrote this:
hi/'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''':>>

 Hi birdy face birdy face? My cat is a genius.

Anyway, bottom line is he hasn't been eating much for the past two days, and what he does eat, he hasn't kept down. And he really seemed like he was in pain before throwing up--he was really yowling and howling, which was actually a good alert for us to put him in the bathroom and save the carpets. He seemed to have gotten his appetite back this evening, but he had been acting kind of lethargic all day...and then he threw up again and seemed really drained of energy. Of course this happened around 7pm when the regular vet was closed.

So off we went to the emergency vet. And down went our bank accounts. But we did rule out any obstruction with an X-ray, and he does seems to be doing better after getting fluids. We'll take him to the regular vet tomorrow for some other tests at a lower cost in his regular appointment.

So there goes a chunk of my horse fund! Uuugggh.

Lazy, Lazy Sunday

Is it wrong that I am super thrilled to have a no-horse Sunday? Well, not so much no-horse as nothing whatsoever. I didn't get dressed till one, and so far the one productive thing I've done is bathe the cat. Which was surprisingly drama-free aside from a couple "Why meeeee?" meows.

That's right...Beckett is back. For good.

Post-bath today on the heated blanket: Going...

Going...

Gone.

 The reason we were pet-sitting him originally was so that Byron's dad's fiancee could confirm whether or not she was allergic to him or if it was something else...and yup, it was him. Sad for her, but very very happy for Byron and me. He really is the perfect cat. His schedule matches up perfectly with ours--he sleeps the whole night, wants to play a little in the morning before work, then he's quiet and sleepy till about 6pm, when he turns back into a hyper kitty maniac and needs us to tire him out. Then around 10 he's ready to sleep again. And I don't know if it is brain damage from his 9-story fall or what, but you can cut this cat's nails, give him a bath, whatever, and then he loves you again in 30 minutes. Never seen that before. After the tantrum he had the first time I put his fake nails on, I fully expected to be shunned for 2-3 days.

Anyway, on to horse stuff.

Item 1: I have been second-guessing the whole buying a horse thing. Saving up for the cost of the horse isn't a problem, and I could handle routine monthly expenses if I did field board--but if something terrible and unexpected in the over-$1000 range happened to him, I couldn't handle that plus his regular expenses. And, you know, paying my student loans and feeding myself. Even though I really really want a horse of my own that I can attach to, I know that leasing is really the more responsible, financially comfortable option for me right now when I think of the worst-case scenario. And we all know that horses are suicidal. Ugh, being a grown up sucks.

So I'm thinking...keep saving as if I were going to buy a horse, but just let that money grow to become a horse fund/horse emergency fund for the future. Then I'll start looking for a lease come springtime. And figure out a way to keep working with my trainer without having to trailer in. The farm I'm at is close to a lot of boarding facilities and it's way in the boonies, so depending on where I found a lease, maybe even hacking to lessons could be an option if she didn't want to travel to me.

All of this is up in the air though, considering I haven't done anything about anything or talked to my trainer about it aside from a vague, "Hey, I want to get a horse in the next year or two."

Item 2: Now that I have more free time on the weekends, I'd like to devote more time to writing and blogging. So I have two ideas:

--Make my weekly own blog hop like Living a Dream has (had? She hasn't done one since November, looks like). I used to participate in those but kind of lost interest once she sold her horses and the blog hop questions weren't horse-themed anymore. So that's in the works. Hopefully some of my readers will join in the hop!

--Start writing for Horse Nation. My dream job would be if my Practical Horseman internship last spring (dang, I still need to write about that for you all!) had materialized into a full-time gig, but alas, with the state of magazine publishing, it wasn't to be. BUT that doesn't mean I shouldn't keep up my horsey writing (just in case, one day?).   I just need to come up with an idea for a column that I wouldn't run out of ideas to write about. And since "riding on the cheap" is a very loose focus at best for this blog, I don't know if I want to make that the focus of a column. Maybe just the adventures of a horse-crazed 20-something? Is that interesting? Or profiling horse jobs you could have? Not sure if that would be interesting for me. Maybe horse blog recommendations? Or useful weird tips? Prac used to have a short column about that, but it would definitely involve some research for me. But then again, what's a couple more hours on Chronicle of the Horse?

For now, I have an idea for my first submission, but in any case, I'm crowdsourcing it: does anyone out there have a better idea?

Beckett's Hockey Game

I have to admit, part of the reason I was excited to cat-sit was that now I can become vicariously Youtube-famous with dumb cat videos.

Beckett loves ANYTHING plastic and crinkly...and this fortune cookie has kept him entertained for the past 45 minutes straight.