Birthday Week!

I am a Cinco de Mayo baby, so the 1st day of May is always one of my favorites because its the start of my birthday week and usually means the Kentucky Derby is only a few days away. Unfortunately, with COVID-19 for the first time in my life I will not be watching the Derby on my birthday week. Luckily, this weekend was still filled with many fun horsey adventures.

Friday I got off work and headed out to the barn to ride. Montego had the vet out this week for annual shots with the rest of the barn and a couple of the horses (including mine) got put into the category of “too fat out of winter”. This means muzzles. Last year when I brought Montego home from Maine, he did really well on the turnout without a muzzle. In Maine, he was on a dry lot all year with hay but no grass fields. However, at his current barn he is fed buffet style which he is not complaining about and honestly I don’t either. They are fed the nicest quality free choice hay all day on turnout and all night in their stall. Unfortunately, Montego he took it a little too far and needs to cut back on the Spring grass.

I ordered two muzzles to try this year: the Flexible Filly Thinline Muzzle and the Greengard Muzzle. Both offer more airflow and comfort than your typical muzzles. I started with the Thinline on Wednesday. Right now the grass on the rested fields is extremely tall and with a more open muzzle, Montego has figured out to eat through the sides. So now were onto the Greengard which is a little more closed in and hopefully that keeps his grass intake lower. This horse does not even get a lot of grain: 1lb ration balancer AM/PM. It goes to show just how important forage is in a horses diet.

Saturday was another gorgeous day weather wise which I took full advantage of it and cleaned/organized some of my tack at the barn. With rain at the end of last week, Montego was a mud ball but got him groomed up and did a quick easy ride on him around the grass fields.

Sunday, I was back out early to help friend W run some errands for the barn. We ventured out to Lowes in our new dressage themed face-masks and got a bunch of items for some painting projects around the barn. The jumps we have have not been painted in about 6 years so they are due for some TLC. We also wanted to paint our supplement/vet cabinets in the feed room to have a nice chalkboard front.

Once we got back to the barn we did some much needed power washing starting with blankets. This year I decided instead of sending all my blankets to get professionally washed to try doing it myself. I have a washer for just my horse things at home so I am hoping with some Nikwash and Waterproofing they’ll be good as new for next year and I’ll save a little bit of money. Next, we started on the jumps that have been sitting outside the ring collecting dirt and growing grass. A quick pass of those and they should be ready to go for painting this week/weekend.

The rest of this week is looking pretty nice weather wise, so I am hoping to get some good rides in to prepare for an online dressage show next week! Details coming soon.

How did you spend your weekend? Hopefully the spring weather has allowed you to spend more time outside!