We drove the brief 15 minutes to the USET headquarters and found Coda covered in shavings, a sure sign he was down during the night. A great thing! Lying down to sleep means a horse feels comfortable and safe. He had consumed much of one water bucket and 1/2 of the other one! Also a great sign! There were lots of "buried treasures" to discover, too! (Coda has a lovely habit of burying his potty in the shavings...Jess and I like to joke that they are "buried treasure", as we have to hunt for them.)
Following breakfast, Jess took Coda on his first walk of the USET warm up arenas, grounds, and main Show arena. He was full of energy and whinnied in search of other horses during the entire walk. He actually got lucky and got a few return whinnies! The grounds are absolutely beautiful...lush and green. Coda also greatly enjoyed munching on the grass and clover. And the walk through the grounds is quite a workout for the horse and the person doing the hand walking!
Jess came across Adrienne Lyle in the warm up barn. We met Adrienne at the Festival of Champions in San Juan Capistrano, CA last year. Adrienne has trained with and been the assistant to Debbie McDonald, who retired from competition earlier this year. Adrienne won the Brentina cup (named for Debbie's famous mare, Brentina) at last year's championships and this year is competing as a professional. She is a terrific rider and a really sweet young woman.
Coda is housed in temporary tent stalls. Nothing fancy, but they work! The bad part about them is that we aren't near any electrical source, so plugging anything in isn't possible. There are lights strung through the tent that are run off a generator, but the generator can't really support much else. So, we went in search of a portable generator. God, I love Home Depot! You can always find one and the people are so incredibly helpful! We had this wonderful woman helping us figure out which size we needed and settled on a very basic model that was rechargeable and I could plug our Game Ready icing machine into it directly. It didn't break the bank, either. (I only spent $100, Michael!)
We headed back to the USET to ice Coda's legs. This is a ritual we do after every ride. Coda has "wind puffs" and the icing is really helpful in reducing the swelling he experiences in his legs. (I have no idea what "wind puffs" are other than that they are little pockets of fluid in his legs that feel squishy. I do know they don't hurt him or cause him any difficultly...probably because we take such good care of him by wrapping his legs at night and icing him after work.) Coda LOVES being iced. He gets lots of attention because we hang out with him! And, today, we actually were IN his stall with him cleaning the inside of the tent walls. He was so happy to have the company!
I think the long trip got the best of us this afternoon. We came back to the hotel to take a break and I fell asleep for about an hour. Jess texted me at 5 to see if I was ready to go back and feed Coda dinner. While we were doing our evening routine, our friends, Jimmy, Stacey and McKenzie Jenkins arrived from Tennessee. I helped them get their stall set up, while McKenzie walked Tsarina around the "barn". McKenzie is competing as a Young Rider this year.
After we fed Coda, we headed straight to dinner at Maggiano's, across the street from our hotel. Who knew there'd be a wait at 6:45 on a Sunday evening? Luckily, Mary Cameron Rollins and her mom, Jo, Molly (M.C.'s trainer), and Caroline Roffman were there and had been waiting for a table. They invited us to join them! We had so much fun! We talked, shared pictures of our dogs (of course!!!), laughed, told stories and enjoyed a yummy dinner. Then, we all headed back to the barn for night check. It is supposed to be in the 50's tonight so we decided to put a cooler on Coda. We didn't bring a proper sheet (who would have thought it would be so cool...), so we used the cooler because it has a belly strap. We did our chores, gave Coda a few treats and headed back to the hotel for a shower and good night sleep!
Karen arrives tomorrow after lunch!
No comments:
Post a Comment