This guy is 29 years old today! It never ceases to entertain me that my horse is older than at least 25 percent of the employees I work with. He could really teach them a lot about hard work and tenacity. I’m grateful that this past year has been relatively uneventful for the old guy compared […]

I’m elated to finally have a good’ish update about Simon! If you have not been following along, the short version is that he’s had ongoing soundness issues in his hind end and symptoms of pain causing him to be a bit more fractious than normal and avoiding laying down. Last fall he got hocks and a […]

Coco turns the ripe old age of 10 this year. I took things vvvveeerrrryyyy slowly getting her started for myriad reasons ranging from resources to preservation of soundness, and now I’m feeling quite behind in her development. Added onto that the COVID year(s) and my focus on foxhunting and she just isn’t where a 10 […]

I may be the only person in the entire state, but I really kind of enjoy Texas’ winter storms. I’m also amongst a very privileged minority who have been blessed with no power outages during winter storms in the nearly 16 years we have lived at our property. Yes, I count my blessings after each […]

I have no idea if I’ve blogged about this at all, but a couple years ago the trainer I showed with hung up her trainer hat and moved to Florida to pursue a slower and less dramatic life away from horse showing. She’s living her best beach life these days! The timing was in some […]

I realize that Thoroughbreds all change age on January 1, but I still like to acknowledge the actual birthdays of my horses. Now, I’m not one of those crazy people who forces my horse to wear ridiculous birthday hats (Amanda), but I do give extra dinner or special scratches or something. Plus it’s a nice […]

Ufta, 2021 was a YEAR! A lot of good, but it didn’t end well. Jaguar colicked again the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Thankfully it turned out ok, but still required a night at the vet’s facility. And frustratingly, I think it very easily could have been prevented. Boot City got me a truckload of […]

The alliteration in the title is really the only funny part of this post, but I couldn’t help myself! Last winter, Simon and I had an incident while visiting another hunt. I came off and landed on my head and Simon got wrapped in hot wire and (understandably) kind of lost his shit. We both […]

There is a great deal of discussion in the world of hunters and jumpers right now (USHJA and USEF specifically) about how to define “amateurs” in the sport. Lots of talk about being a sponsored rider or a social media influencer or doing various barn activities for pay and whether those things prevent someone from […]

On Saturday, May 15, my girl Chivas crossed the rainbow bridge. She was about 15 years old and it was just a few weeks shy of being a Derrbetts for 15 years. My parents had lost their Jack Russell in May of 2006 and asked me to find a puppy for them. I had some […]